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ОглавлениеUniting efforts, building a team, and developing projects with an interdisciplinary approach is –clearly– a winning bet that can yield much fruit. This notion gave birth to the joint work between the Project 2 course, a subject that is part of the freshman year of PDE, the Center for Integrity and the Department of Artistic Development. In this spirit of cooperation, these three departments joined together to accompany the students in the design of a floor lamp, inspired by the book The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
The role of each department within the University and its role in the project is explained below.
Product design engineering is the term used to define the profession of the people who design and develop products from the standpoint of the end user and industrial production. In addition to the technical and economic performance of the products, they must be novel, easy to understand and operate, and capable of generating a visual and aesthetic appeal to successfully compete in the market (see Figure 1). In this respect, product design engineering merges design factors, which make a product desired by users; engineering factors, which guarantee its technological feasibility and; finally, market factors, which support the product’s viability as a business.
Figure 1. Profile of a Product Design Engineer
Profile of a Product Design Engineer
To achieve this level of professional training, PDE has an integrated factor area of study. The objective of this area is the integration of all the program’s study areas through their practical application in the development of a product design project. Consequently, using current theoretical and practical training principles of the university, this area seeks to integrate engineering, design, marketing and contextual factors, while favoring learning methods and employing them within a methodology to solve problems.
Project 2 is a design course that is part of the integrated factor area of the major’s second semester. It is meant to be the focal point of the semester. The course has a common structure based on three fundamental elements that define its themes, scope and methodological strategies: the pedagogical objective of the project, the context, and the design and construction of artifacts, which are described below.
• The pedagogical objective of the project: the project is the focal point and the ultimate aim of all the design exercises that are developed during the course. In this case, the pedagogical objective of Project 2 is for the students to become metacognitive, that is to say, to reflect on their own design processes. The goal is to train the students in technical and aesthetic elements and user needs.
• The context: is the environment in which the project is framed, and which allows the student to understand the problems that arise in the various segments of design in general. In this case, the work is carried out in the context of a home, in a category of artifacts that are characteristic to the major: furniture.
• The design and construction of artifacts: the purpose of this element is for the students to acquire and apply technical and formal knowledge in solving problems related to the design context that has been defined for the exercise. Two exercises are developed in the course: a standing luminaire and a piece of furniture for a specific user.
In 2011, Universidad EAFIT started to develop a program of academic integrity with the idea of reducing academic fraud and promoting a culture of integrity. The program did not only seek to promote the culture of integrity in the classroom, but also in several spheres of life of those who were part of the EAFIT community. The project –called, “Atreverse a Pensar,” (Dare to Think in English)– designed a strong communicational component which effectively gave visibility to issue of integrity at the University. Additionally, an educational component was created with the idea of taking ethical reflection into the classroom. However, despite multiple efforts such as: conferences with experts, talks, film forums and studies, which served as a thermometer for academic honesty within the institution, the project directors understood that changing behavior is very complex and implied a longer-term program.
From the beginning, the members of the program have believed that communication plays an important role when it comes to highlighting integrity, being the controversial issue that it is. It was essential that the entire university community knew about the institution’s commitment to academic integrity. In this vein, they were aware that powerful and provocative messages on billboards, posters and virtual cards would be of great help to achieve that goal. Likewise, they intuited that the space and conditions for a genuine, profound reflection to be made, only existed within the singularity that emerged in each of the courses taught at the university, where a very special professor-student relationship could be built.
Over time, there were cases in which professors from EAFIT’s six schools (Administration, Engineering, Law, Humanities, Economics and Finance, and Sciences) effectively included the question of integrity at some point during the course and invited the students to question their decisions in moral terms. The students were invited to analyze business case studies in the light of ethics and to reflect on corruption as daily practice which has taken root in Colombian politics and – to some extent – the sphere of private enterprises.
The overall result after six years of the implementation of Dare to Think was positive. On one hand, there was a joy that this genuine desire to lead a project of applied ethics had been carried out at Universidad EAFIT. On the other hand, the deeper knowledge of the phenomenon of academic integrity – thanks to the lessons from all the years of work – required a position of greater commitment to continue the efforts, which would need a thought process with a more strategic look and a long-term horizon.
Thus, in July of 2016, the Center for Integrity was born and officially inaugurated on February 23, 2017. The ceremony was honored by the presence of the Spanish philosopher, Adela Cortina, who keynoted a conference called, “Education from Being: The Sense of Ethics in the Construction of a Fair and Inclusive Society. Having been established as a Center, working with professors and students began to take on a special relevance. For this reason, the Center’s founding principles include three lines of action: The Educational line, the Research line, and the Social Projection line.
In the educational line, the main purpose is to provide support to professors and students so that the teaching and learning experience is significant and transcendent in terms of being, knowledge and know-how. From this educational perspective, the Center for Integrity linked up with the Project 2 course at the beginning of the second semester of 2017. This was done with the aim of accompanying the luminaire design exercise during seven academic weeks, through a reflection on ethics based on The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Department of Artistic Development
The Department of Artistic Development, an area assigned to the Department of Human Development and University Wellbeing, is a place to discover oneself, to express cultural and artistic skills in a fun way, and to participate in an introspection oriented to personal knowledge. The Department provides a place where it is possible to involve oneself in the creation and appreciation of art. (Universidad EAFIT, N.d).
Within a framework of informal education, the department has facilitators and quality programs, coordinates activities directed to society, and offers training designed to complement the human being’s integral development.
In addition, having taken into consideration that skills can be developed, the Department promotes the stimulation of manual and physical aptitudes, training in different plastic art techniques, and the promotion of artistic appreciation.
This work is achieved thanks to the places adapted especially for the different expressions of culture and the arts. These hands-on experiences are carried out close enough for the participants to be actively involved – as artists or spectators. In this way, they can be trained as an audience that exercises critical thinking, has a high expectation of the future, and respects itsef and all artistic expression.
Thus, the Department of Artistic Development, directed by Elsa Vásquez, was invited to participate in the project of luminaries based on The Little Prince with origami and jewelry workshops. The goal was to enrich the language of the luminaries with paper folding and metal sheeting techniques and, in turn, for students to develop artistic skills and materialize them in their projects.
What follows is an explanation of what the exercise entailed from the pedagogical point of view and a discussion about the methodology.
