Abstract
AbstractThis paper addresses the issue of how to enhance student participation in university governance. This issue is approached by taking into account the growing pressures of the European Commission’s modernization agenda on the educational policies of the European Higher Education Area, and by focusing on the way these pressures affect students’ conceptions of themselves and of the mission of higher education. The thesis presented in this paper is that design thinking and the humanities share a common epistemological core that enables them, if applied in educational settings, to play a major role in fostering students’ trust in their governance skills and in their ability to influence educational policies through a creative mindset and a deeper comprehension of the stakes in present-day higher education. An experimental workshop combining design thinking with the humanities and with the constructivist approach of student-centered learning was held within a course in a humanities bachelor program on the basis of a heuristic framework developed through an interdisciplinary research process. This process was conducted according to the principles of design and hermeneutics. The outcomes of the workshop in terms of the participants’ enhanced self-confidence and decisional skills validate the thesis of this study.
Highlights
The case presented in this paper is an experimental design thinking (DT) workshop for humanities students which took place at the University of Urbino (Uniurb) within the Foreign Languages and Cultures bachelor degree program in Spring 2018
We suggest which of the competencies and skills that students can develop and train through our joint DT-humanities approach might support and enhance their proactive contribution to each step of institutional decision-making, and which Dublin Descriptors (DDs), in our view, they match along those steps
As we are both committed to a democratic vision of higher education (HE) as a common good with multiple personal and social aims, we have developed a joint approach between DT and the humanities which, as findings from data analysis seem to confirm, has enabled us to effectively enhance students’ confidence in their ability to affect HE policies
Summary
The case presented in this paper is an experimental design thinking (DT) workshop for humanities students which took place at the University of Urbino (Uniurb) within the Foreign Languages and Cultures bachelor degree program in Spring 2018. The workshop was designed to investigate the issue of how to promote two main areas of student democratic participation in higher education (HE): student-centered learning (SCL) and student participation in university governance This issue is being debated by all actors involved in present-day European higher education (HE): scholars of learning sciences and education theory, student representative unions, and institutional policy-makers within the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). This debate is being led on the background of two diverging visions of HE and of the role of students in it: the vision of HE as a common good with multiple individual and social aims in a democratic society, and that of HE as a service-provision for the European job market in view of Europe’s economic competitiveness on a global scale. In the last two decades, the European Commission, itself participating in EHEA strategy-making, has increasingly pressed upon the national governments towards a modernization agenda and a managerial turn in HE
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