Design argumentation in academic design education

Educating Marketing Students to Understand Designers’ Thought-Worlds

“…The method of learning design thinking is often misaligned with how academic achievement is typically measured (Dalsgaard et al, 2013; Goldman et al, 2012; Retna, 2016). The more traditional outcome focused assessment frameworks are less easily aligned with creative, practice based, or active learning based, design course activities (Dalsgaard et al, 2013; Goldman et al, 2012). In essence, it is easier to mark an exam than a return design brief.…”

“…Indeed, Norman (2010) called for a change in design education to deal with the fact that many design students are left to justify their designs (innovations) on claims without providing a strong and sound argument that support those claims. Hence, we can conclude that constructive alignment (Biggs & Tang, 2011) is deemed more difficult for design courses that are based on an active learning approach (Dalsgaard et al, 2013), especially if they take on a human-centered design approach.…”

“…In this course, argumentation theory is introduced to help students justify their final marketing idea in a written report. Research suggests that teaching argumentation theory to students in creative thinking courses to justify their design ideas allows for integration into traditional outcome-based university education and subsequent constructive alignment to common academic evaluation criteria and formats (Dalsgaard et al, 2013). A way to convince someone to employ a proposed innovative solution is by providing a sound and strong argument (Dalsgaard et al, 2013; Feast & Blijlevens, 2014).…”

“…Research suggests that teaching argumentation theory to students in creative thinking courses to justify their design ideas allows for integration into traditional outcome-based university education and subsequent constructive alignment to common academic evaluation criteria and formats (Dalsgaard et al, 2013). A way to convince someone to employ a proposed innovative solution is by providing a sound and strong argument (Dalsgaard et al, 2013; Feast & Blijlevens, 2014). A sound and strong argument contains the following elements: (1) A claim , what you want your audience to believe, (2) Grounds , the reasons and evidence why they should believe it, (3) A warrant , a general principle that explains why your evidence is relevant to your claim, (4) Backing , the body of accepted knowledge of a field or the values of a culture that provide the foundations that authorize the reliability of the warrant, (5) Rebuttal , counter arguments to limitations, and (6) Qualifications that make your claim and evidence more precise (Toulmin et al, 1984).…”