Final Year Induction - Re-engagement and Re-motivation.

Abstract

This paper considers design education in practice and reports on a new experience undertaken at ?? University (?U) with final year BA/BSc Product Design students. Increasingly, students returning to the final year of the programme have struggled in recent years to both develop credible final year project proposals and also re-engage with academic life and meet the expectations held of them at Honours level. Therefore, the final year project team took the decision to implement a new strategy for the start of the final year in September 2011. The students returned to University a week early and undertook an intensive, week long, programme that was specifically designed to: a) Engage them fully with a return to academic life and set expectations of final year b) Expose them to a wide range of opportunities to seek meaningful problems that would benefit from a product based solution. This paper expands upon the structure of the week and the activities that were undertaken by students and also provides feedback on the experience from the perspective of both academic staff and students. The paper concludes with a detailed evaluation of the experience and what has been learnt. However, the experience has been deemed to be a success by both staff and students and planning for a similar experience next year has already begun, along with a plan to roll out the principles to all design courses within the Framework.