Conference Agenda

The imperative of creating inclusive learning environments remains a central focus in education, particularly within cross-cultural collaborations. While there is a broad consensus on its importance, approaches to achieving this goal vary across disciplines and contexts. This paper adopts a mixed-methods approach—including metacognitive surveys, field observations, and interviews—to explore the factors that contribute to fostering inclusive learning experiences in cross-cultural design collaborations among students from diverse backgrounds.

Our research centers on international design workshops with students from universities in the USA and Taiwan, where participants collaborate to create product-service systems that emphasize sustainability, cultural inspiration, and targeted markets. Insights from these workshops reveal that, while cultural and language differences present significant challenges, these barriers can be mitigated through carefully structured instruction, clear communication of expectations, and the use of artifacts to aid design development. Moreover, design methods incorporating non-verbal and asynchronous communication strategies, such as the nominal group technique, effectively promote inclusivity, particularly for non-native speakers. The selection of topics and settings that encourage knowledge sharing and experiential exchange between students from different cultures further enhances the relevance, accessibility, and meaningfulness of the design and learning experiences. Although these findings are drawn from international design collaborations, we contend that similar strategies can benefit design education beyond the context of international workshops. We advocate for the broader application of these approaches and principles to foster inclusive and equitable learning environments across various design education settings and to create product-service systems that meet diverse cultural needs.

Structured reflective journaling is a valuable tool in design education, enabling students to critically evaluate their learning, track progress, and refine their design decisions. This study explores the impact of structured reflective journaling on student learning in a five-week modular furniture design course at Tecnológico de Monterrey. Using a rubric-guided approach, students documented their progress, insights, challenges, and self-assessments. Analysis of journals and questionnaires reveals that while journaling helped students track progress and refine ideas, challenges included time constraints and student engagement with journalling. The structured rubric played a key role in guiding deeper engagement with the reflection process. Findings suggest that integrating flexible reflection milestones, alternative formats, and structured prompts can enhance journaling’s effectiveness. This paper highlights the potential of reflective journaling to develop critical thinking and self-directed learning in design students, offering insights for educators seeking to integrate structured reflection into project-based design courses.

This study explores how industrial design students in China take on the dual roles of designer and user in a student-led curriculum, the study is based on the first student-led global project at a Chinese university. This paper describes the project content and process of the course to determine the roles and tasks that students take on at different times. Secondly, a case study is conducted on the design projects completed by the student design teams. Finally, the student interviews are analyzed. The research indicates that students have a strong interest in the design courses of different cultural backgrounds, but they often find it difficult to switch roles, from designer to a client. The reason should be that students have fuzzy cognition and different understanding of the concept of clients and designers.

Academia-industry collaboration in product development and innovation fosters significant enhancements in project-based learning (PjBL). PjBL, recognized for integrating acquired knowledge into real-life projects, benefits from active industry involvement by providing academia with contemporary industry challenges, connecting to prevailing market trends and impactful course outputs. This symbiotic relationship bridges the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application, providing students with relevant industry exposure while granting industry access to innovative minds shaping its future. However, to harness the full potential of this synergy, efficient management of these relationships is crucial, involving complexities such as mutual benefits, intellectual property issues, time commitments, and role clarity. Based on interviews with 54 educators from 33 global institutions within the Design Factory Global Network (DFGN), this qualitative study explores four key activities of academia-industry relationship management: expectation management, ongoing communication, network building, and value-adding events. Effective expectation management clarifies mutual benefits early, while regular communication aligns academic and industry objectives. Building robust networks and hosting value-adding events strengthen these partnerships, contributing to sustained growth and innovation across educational and industry spheres. Through the key criteria revealed in these activities, the study provides insights into forming and maintaining effective industry relationships, enhancing project-based learning, and contributing to broader innovation progression.

This study aims to identify the key factors for integrating art-based strategies to help high school students gain a holistic understanding of problems within a design-based complex problem-solving project. Art-based strategies use artistic forms and processes to expand perspectives, deepen understanding of complex concepts, and facilitate problem-solving. Based on an inquiry-based cross-disciplinary program at a public high school in Japan, which uses design thinking to foster problem-finding and solving, this study found students struggle to identify research issues and often remain at a superficial understanding level. To address this, the study integrates art-based strategies into design process to improve students’ problem comprehension and identification skills. Two research questions are posed: how familiar are teachers with integrating art-based strategies？ what challenges may they face when integrating these strategies? The study focuses on Fukusho High School, with four teachers participating in a focus group to evaluate the strategies for clarifying their familiarity, feasibility, and acceptance of integrating art-based strategies into the project.