Project R-9474

An international workshop as a first step towards blended learning techniques in retail design (Education)

As a result of the first part of a PhD in educating the retail designer of tomorrow, our Faculty has developed a model to get the best out of teaching retail design. So far, we developed a framework of competencies a retail designer should obtain during his education. As a first experiment in testing how to teach these competencies in a contained short period of time (like the workshop) we are proposing a two-fold model that contains of two different ways of learning. First, the bachelor students get to learn the craft of retail design in the most efficient way. Second, Master students, that should know the craft get to learn how to communicate it to others, in team. Why do we do this? Literature on educating design shows that when students need to explain the knowledge they gained to other students the learning curve increases enormously. We notice a gap between knowing about retail design and applying what they know. To this end, we propose a model in which one professor will be joined by a small team of UHasselt master students (6 in this case). The professor leads the workshop, but the students help with the disseminating of the knowledge by being part of one or two groups. This workshop is part of a bigger plan of trying to develop interdisciplinary and international design tools, within retail design as a first test case. The main goal of this larger project is to develop a toolbox that will allow other designers to teach retail design without having experience in it.

11 March 2019 - 18 March 2019