Becoming a Designer: The value of sensitive design situations for teaching and learning ethical design and design theory

Teaching and learning design theory are challenging tasks. To solely teach design theory through rules or codes of conduct, could be seen as a static way of approaching a complex phenomenon. In this paper, we argue for the importance of engagement in sensitive design situations, an approach that entails a process of de-emphasizing objectivity and promoting subjectivity through real-life sensitive cases to learn from, to foster reflectiveness for the future designers. This study aims to explore how sensitive design situations can be used when teaching and learning design theory. The research approach consists of a case study in a Nordic university, and a course in interaction design in a software engineering program. The sensitive design situation involves designing a digital artifact that can help children that have been diagnosed with cancer, cope with their cancer treatment. The main contribution is a teaching method for cultivating ethical design, which includes the application of sensitive design situations when teaching ethics to students. We illustrate that by forwarding three characteristics that can be used when teaching and learning ethical design through sensitive design situations

Getting off the carousel : Exploring the wicked problem of curriculum reform

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank all participants in this study. Our thanks to the School of Medicine where this study was undertaken for supporting LH’s doctoral research program. Our thanks to Alan Bleakley for his advice and guidance when planning the interview component of this study.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A strategic approach to making sense of the “wicked” problem of ERM

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an approach to viewing the “wicked” problem of electronic records management (ERM), using the Cynefin framework, a sense-making tool. It re-conceptualises the ERM challenge by understanding the nature of the people issues. This supports decision making about the most appropriate tactics to adopt to effect positive change. Design/methodology/approach – Cynefin was used to synthesise qualitative data from an empirical research project that investigated strategies and tactics for improving ERM. Findings – ERM may be thought of as a dynamic, complex challenge but, viewed through the Cynefin framework, many issues are not complex; they are simple or complicated and can be addressed using best or good practice. The truly complex issues need a different approach, described as emergent practice. Cynefin provides a different lens through which to view, make sense of and re-perceive the ERM challenge and offers a strategic approach to accelerating change. Research limitations/implications – Since Cynefin has been applied to one data set, the findings are transferrable not generalisable. They, and/or the approach, can be used to further test the propositions. Practical implications – The resultant ERM framework provides a practical example for information and records managers to exploit or use as a starting point to explore the situation in particular organisational contexts. It could also be used in other practical, teaching and/or research-related records contexts. Originality/value – This paper provides a new strategic approach to addressing the wicked problem of ERM, which is applicable for any organisational context

Learning to Engage With Wicked Problems

Complex, societal problems can be overwhelming. Maybe better avoid them. This contribution shows how a cloud-based learning technology—the Reflect! platform—can be used to practice a particular strategy for dealing with so-called wicked problems. By providing a learning experience that is close to collaborative problem-solving in real life, students can gain the self-confidence needed to engage constructively with wicked problems. The approach presented is an example of how philosophy can contribute to general education. After discussing the notion of wicked problems and what is required to cope with them, this article provides information that should be useful for readers who want to include a focus on wicked problems in their teaching: first, a discussion of how the work of learners can be assessed—with examples that demonstrate what is expected—and, second, the results of a survey-based assessment of the Reflect! learning experience from learners’ points of view

Relational reinvention : writing, engagement, and mapping as wicked response

textThis multimedia dissertation, situated in Rhetoric and Composition, Digital Media Studies, and Civic Engagement, articulates a sustainable, agile approach to “wicked problems.” These complex, definition-resistant, interlocking problems (such as racism or climate change) aren’t ultimately solvable; rather than wicked problems being “acted upon,” they can only be creatively and rigorously “responded to” by networks of committed individuals and institutions. This dissertation posits that a wicked problem necessitates a “wicked response”: a sustained, emergent, and fluid strategy that focuses on changing relationships – to people, to space, and to knowledge. In order, to make this argument, I present the case of Mart, a small, formerly prosperous town in East Texas that has been in decline over the last half of a century. Throughout this dissertation, I analyze the ongoing efforts of the Mart Community Project (MCP), a cohort of Mart residents, international artists, and students and instructors from a variety of departments at the University of Texas at Austin. Over the past two years, the MCP has engaged in over twenty-five discrete projects, all with the aim of helping the Mart Community reimagine itself in the face of its primary wicked problem: a lack of civic cohesion. In the first chapter I explore how language fails to define or describe a wicked problem, yet is still necessary in order to transform it. I illustrate this contradiction in part through the Chambless Field mural, a successful MCP community arts project that by “writing community” became a productive response. My second chapter examines service learning and demonstrates how university/community partnerships and “participatory engagement” can be part of a nuanced approach to a wicked problem. Using the work of UT students in design-oriented and civic engagement classes, I demonstrate in the third chapter how “mapping” can be both a savvy pedagogical tool and a key element in reinventing the relationships of people to space and to one another. This dissertation offers up these diverse strategies with the sincere hope that the particulars of the MCP’s wicked response might be productively generalized to aid others participating in similarly challenging civic engagement work on wicked problems.Englis

An Empirical Investigation into Wicked Operational Problems

This thesis begins by considering the nature of research in Operations Management, the methods that are employed and the types of problems it addresses. We contend that as the discipline matures and it extends its boundaries the research challenges become more complex and the reductionist techniques of Operations Research become less appropriate. To explore this issue we use the concept of wicked problems. Wicked problems were developed by Rittel and Webber during the 1970’s. They suggest the existence of a class of problems which could not be solved using the techniques of Operations Research. They describe Wicked Problems using ten properties or characteristics, which, after a thorough review of their descriptions, we have condensed to six themes. We consider the current state of the “Wicked Problem” literature and have identified the paucity relating to Operations Management. Thus we develop our research question: “what are the characteristics of wicked operational problems?” We investigate this question using a single extended case study of an operation experiencing significant unresolved performance issues. We analyse the case using the tenets of systems thinking, structure and behaviour, and extend the empirical literature on wicked problems to identify the characteristics of wicked operational problems. The research indicates that elements of wicked problems exist at an operational level. The significance of this finding is that reductionist techniques to problem solving e.g. lean and six sigma may not be applicable to the challenges facing operational managers when confronted with the characteristics of a wicked operational problem

Tackling Wicked Problems

This book is designed specifically for Plymouth State University students enrolled in the “Tackling a Wicked Problem” course and contains sections on wicked problems, habits of mind, and information literacy. This material was written specifically for the TWP course as well as material from other openly licensed material including

Addressing the wicked problem of feedback during the teaching practicum

COVID-19 affected the teaching practicum placement of approximately 650 fourth year BEd Foundation Phase student teachers at University N in April and July 2020. The teaching practicum is seen as a purposeful, organised, supervised, mentored and assessed educational activity required for the completion of a teacher education programme. During the teaching practicum, the provision of feedback from teacher educators as well as mentor teachers forms an integral part of the learning process and enriches student teachers’ learning experiences. However, student dissatisfaction with feedback during the teaching practicum presents a “wicked” problem that requires a strategic partnership approach between the university and partnership schools as well as between the triad partners of teacher educator, mentor teacher and student teacher. The purpose of this exploratory case study is to provide an overview of student teachers’ perspectives on the innovative use of a social annotation platform to ensure greater collaboration on the “wicked” problem of feedback by all partners during the “learning from practice” component of the teaching practicum. The results indicated that student teachers, teacher educators as well as mentor teachers were actively engaged “on the same page” with constructive dialogic feedback that assisted student teachers to make crucial adjustments to the core practice of explaining/modelling content

Collaborative learning and coordination across agency boundaries to tackle wicked problems

Conventional approaches to government are confounded by issues that cross agency, stakeholder, jurisdictional, and geopolitical boundaries. These open-ended and highly interdependent issues are often characterized in the literature as ‘wicked problems. Typically, policies and budgets are developed to align with organizational boundaries, making it difficult to bring the appropriate talent, knowledge and assets into an interagency approach to tackle the interdependencies of whatever wicked problem is at hand. Many governments have recognized the need for interagency coordination in the face of highly complex problems; and in response, there has been advocacy for improved approaches to increase collaboration and synchronized interagency working. However, without appreciating that the perspectives and values of the various government agencies and other stakeholders can vary widely, and often can be in conflict, interagency endeavors often start out to solve very different perceived problems. Furthermore, interagency constructs are frequently organized through periodic meetings and loose agreements. They do not develop concrete strategic and operational plans for how an integrated approach will be organized and implemented. The research described in this thesis was conducted to develop and evaluate a Systemic Intervention (boundary-exploring and multi-method) approach to designing interagency responses to wicked problems. This multi-method approach attempts to address many of the challenges to interagency design found in the literature. The Systemic Intervention approach was trialled on the wicked problem of international organized drug trafficking and its interface with local gangs in Chicago, USA. This wicked problem illustrates extreme complexity and the need for a cross-cutting design that cut across agencies, jurisdictions, and geographical boundaries. The research was conducted in two phases: (1) the creation of a common understanding of a wicked problem among multiple agencies using Boundary Critique and a new participatory Problem Structuring Method (PSM) called ‘Systemic Perspective Mapping’; and (2) the design of an interagency meta-organization using the Viable System Model (VSM), introduced to participants through a novel board game layout, so drug crime could be addressed at multiple scales. The research findings indicate that the combined use of Boundary Critique and Systemic Perspective Mapping was able to generate enough of a common understanding to provide a foundation for the design of an interagency organization. Also, the VSM Board Game effectively enabled multiple agency representatives to intimately interact with their representation of the V wicked problem and with each other in order to clearly delineate new agency responsibilities, communication mechanisms and channels, adaptive operations management, and an anticipatory function – all tailored to address the wicked problem they had structured as a group. The methodological approach developed in this research shows significant promise for transfer and adaptation to help tackle the design of interagency organizations for other wicked problems