Why Participate in the IDSA Design Learning Challenge 2012?

The primary purpose of the IDSA Design Learning Challenge 2012 is to expose children to design thinking and create an active awareness of the industrial design discipline as a career option before students leave high school. College design students all over the United States will be challenged to co-create innovative and participatory design learning experiences with art students in grades 6-12, anchored in design thinking and learning skills. Embracing a Learn.Think.Do approach, Design Learning Challenge 2012 will focus on three primary submission categories: Design Day Event, Targeted Design Project and Industrial Design Awareness Campaign.

Why Participate in DLC 2012?

• This challenge offers college design students a safe place to explore a Learn.Think.Do approach.
• The goal is to co-create innovative and participatory design learning experiences with art students in grades 6-12.
• Cultivating curiosity, creative problem solving, critical thinking skills, collaboration and communication are at the core of the learning process.
• Unlike the tradition of being handed an assignment, design and art students will create a methodology to investigate and concepts they want to prove.
• Design and art students will figure out, what they want to figure out as the foundation of their study.
• Each Challenge Category is embedded in a project-based learning approach; design and art students will “learn how to fish, as opposed to being fed fish.”

In partnership with Doris Wells-Papanek, IDSA, principal of Tailored Learning Tools and the National Art Education Association, IDSA launched its second Design Learning Challenge (DLC) on Jan 2012. DLC is an integral part of IDSA's efforts to promote and develop an understanding of the practice of industrial design at the K-12 level.