New Methods to Improve Teaching Quality in the New Era - A Study based on Aalto-Tongji Design Factory Teaching Pedagogical Development Project

The Aalto-Tongji Design Factory in Shanghai is a creative environment bringing together universities, business and society to create new ways of learning, research and innovative collaboration. As part of the Aalto-Tongji Design Factory teaching pedagogical development project, from May to July 2011, the interdisciplinary students (include industrial design, environment design, visual communication design, and digital media design) and faculty team investigated on new methods of teaching to create better learning quality in the rapid changing age, looking at the aspects of new avenues for high engagement in the process of learning. This paper presents the design, process and results of teaching the course “Design History and Theory” with the aim of developing a concrete model of deep learning through innovative teaching, working and evaluating methods. This paper also examines how those methods of teaching can improve in design education. After the teaching practice, feedbacks are collected to analysis whether the hypothesis can be proved or not. The research project is still at an early stage. The findings so far are that the new methods make a significant impact on the students in this course by improving engagement and long-term memories, and those methods are suitable for other similar teaching circumstances of basic design theory education to interdisciplinary students.