Kolding Design School, University College Southern Denmark and the South Denmark EU Office have, in collaboration with partners from France, Belgium, Wales and Finland, developed material to co-create better teaching and strengthen inclusion in schools. The “FUTE” project is based on previous research from the Design School and has now been given an international scope with the help of EU funds.
After three good project years, FUTE (FUture TEaching) has reached the end of the road and the project’s results – a design method for use in school teaching, as well as method maps and training material – were presented at two online webinars in the autumn. The first took place on the 24th of September and was held together with the European partners, while the last was held in a Danish, regional context the 20th of October.
Learning in the future
FUTE is based on a design method concept that the Design School developed back in 2010. The concept is called the 6C model, and the purpose is to promote the students’ understanding of the relationship between knowledge, design processes, and methods. The 6C stands for: Collaborate, Collect, Comprehend, Conceptualise, Create and Communicate.
Per Holst Hansen from University College Southern Denmark explains that the FUTE project thus builds on the work that designers have done in describing and framing design processes.
“The methods and the process model included in the FUTE material were originally developed and described by designers from the School of Design in connection with teaching design students. The idea of the FUTE project has been to further develop the approach and methods for use in the primary school.”
EU funds provide new international opportunities
With support from Erasmus+ and an intercultural partnership collaboration, FUTE has developed tools that can help teachers and students co-create more stimulating and problem-oriented teaching that strengthens engagement and the desire to learn. The goal is to help teachers and students formulate problems and create solutions through inquiry and analysis.
Per Holst Hansen sees several advantages in the FUTE material but highlights two inspiring observations.
“One is the motivation you can experience in the students when they work with problems that concern themselves. The design approach can help to give ownership of what happens in teaching. The other advantage of the material and the design approach is that it can be a really good way to create variety in teaching.”
From local to international potential
In collaboration with European partners, the Danish concept has been further developed. The design thinking model 6C has thus become an international concept that can be used in primary schools worldwide.
Anne Katrine Gøtzsche Gelting, who originally created the 6C model together with colleague Silke K.A. Friis, is satisfied with the project and the intercultural cooperation.
“It has been very interesting for me, as a developer of teaching material on design methods at a design school, to be part of the FUTE project. I have had to explain and justify how we as designers think and what we do when we develop, and it has been clarifying for me. At the same time, it’s great to see how our way of working is useful and interesting for non-designers,” says Anne Katrine Gøtzsche Gelting, Designer, Ph.d. and Teaching Associate Professor and continues:
“Working in an EU context makes our European differences clear, but also that we actually share many of the same challenges – in this case the need to develop a modern primary school and a new approach to learning.”
The three-year collaboration has also been beneficial in the eyes of Lene Nyhus Friis, project manager at the Design School.
“It has been a learning process, and we are very proud of the result. It has also been good to enter an intercultural collaboration with the other partners and interesting to find some differences, but mostly similarities within the different countries.”
The finished – and freely available – teaching material as well as the opinions of the Danish partners are a clear indication that it pays to invest in European projects, because it can create international added value in relation to innovation that has arisen in a local context, explains EU consultant at SDEO, Henriette Hansen.
She also encourages you to contact the Design School if you would like to receive training in using the cards and the design process model.
Do you want to know more about FUTE – and make use of the method cards yourself? Then you can read more on the project’s official website, where it is possible to download the method cards.
SDEO Education 