SPEC 23
Liberal Arts for Epic Challenges: Design Thinking for Social Change Winter 2019

This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

Liberal Arts for Epic Challenges is an introduction to the techniques of design thinking to help liberal arts students gain the necessary skills and confidence to tackle complex social and economic problems: attention to the human dimensions of problems and solutions, creative confidence, risk taking, learning from failure, effective collaboration, and story-telling. Design thinking has become an increasingly prevalent approach in encouraging innovative solutions among start-ups, corporations repositioning themselves, government agencies seeking to improve their citizen services, and NGOs addressing major social problems like rural health care. This winter study course will expose students to the tools of design thinking and then will take on several challenges selected by the students. Students will undertake the research phase in Williamstown, then go to the IBM Design Studio in Austin, Texas (or a similar consulting firm design lab) for the ideation phase in collaboration with designers at IBM and Watson, using the same facilities that IBM design thinkers use. Solving truly difficult problems facing society in the 21st century requires a purposeful approach that draws on a full range of the experiences and perspectives of those who have studied the liberal arts. Only with the advantage of those with an understanding of the social sciences, physical sciences, arts, and humanities provide a sensitivity to both the dimensions of difficult problems and how to address them for human-centered solutions. There will be two 3 hours workshops in the afternoons when in Williamstown, All day in the Design Studio in Austin for 3 days. Light reading, but necessary team meetings between classes.
The Class: Format: travel
Limit: 10
Grading: pass/fail only
Requirements/Evaluation: based on observation of active constructive participation in team efforts and evaluating a final team presentation for relevance,
Extra Info: sensitivity to human-centered concerns, completeness, effective communication, and realistic probability of success, all of which will be documented in an electronic field journal
Prerequisites: interested students must attend an informational meeting and submit a short essay about their interest in the course
Enrollment Preferences: none; not open to first-year students
Materials/Lab Fee: $2600
Attributes: TRVL Winter Study Travel Course

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