Building from the Bottom Up: A Closer Look into the Teaching and Learning of Life's Principles in Biomimicry Design Thinking Courses.

Laura Lee Stevens,Dayna Baumeister,Asha Singhal,Michelle Fehler,Deborah Bidwell

doi:10.3390/biomimetics7010025

Abstract

Biomimicry education is grounded in a set of natural design principles common to every known lifeform on Earth. These Life’s Principles (LPs) (cc Biomimicry 3.8), provide guidelines for emulating sustainable strategies that are field-tested over nearly four billion years of evolution. This study evaluates an exercise for teaching LPs to interdisciplinary students at three universities, Arizona State University (ASU) in Phoenix, Arizona (USA), College of Charleston (CofC) in Charleston, South Carolina (USA) and The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS) in The Hague (The Netherlands) during the spring 2021 semester. Students researched examples of both biological organisms and human designs exhibiting the LPs. We gauged the effectiveness of the exercise through a common rubric and a survey to discover ways to improve instruction and student understanding. Increased student success was found to be directly linked to introducing the LPs with illustrative examples, assigning an active search for examples as part of the exercise, and utilizing direct assessment feedback loops. Requiring students to highlight the specific terms of the LP sub-principles in each example is a suggested improvement to the instructions and rubric. An iterative, face-to-face, discussion-based teaching and learning approach helps overcome minor misunderstandings. Reiterating the LPs throughout the semester with opportunities for application will highlight the potential for incorporating LPs into students’ future sustainable design process.

Highlights

Biomimicry is an emerging discipline that looks towards nature to learn how to create resilient, regenerative and sustainable solutions to human challenges
In regards to the appropriateness of examples of Life’s Principles (LPs) in biological and human systems, 49% percent of students scored proficient while 37% were acceptable
Assigned LP examples were evaluated on the basis of clarity, 38% students scored proficient and 44% were acceptable (Table 3)

Summary

Introduction

Biomimicry is an emerging discipline that looks towards nature to learn how to create resilient, regenerative and sustainable solutions to human challenges. We as humans, are relearning to both apply and teach these biological design lessons through the process of Biomimicry Design Thinking, a framework for translating biology to design. Biomimicry Design Thinking merges Biomimicry Thinking and Design Thinking, to examine the design challenge context, discover existing solutions in nature, create ideas and evaluate them to generate innovative design solutions [1]. When looking for solutions, instead of focusing on human design precedents, biomimicry practitioners begin by looking to nature to discover time tested solutions backed by more than 3.8 billion years of ‘research and development’. By looking at the natural function in context, and translating natural strategies and mechanisms to the design context, biomimicry practitioners practice analogical reasoning

Methods

Results

Conclusion