Educating the Designing Professional: (D)BE the Change

Introduction

Higher education increasingly expects graduates to contribute to complex societal transitions by designing meaningful solutions within their own professional field. Yet existing approaches to Design Thinking often assume that one model works for every profession. (D)BE the Change develops a new Framework for Educating the Designing Professional. It helps programmes translate educational ambitions into practice that reflects their own disciplines, while strengthening students’ professional identity, self-awareness and ability to navigate change.

What is the reason for the project?

Universities of Applied Sciences increasingly prepare students to respond creatively to complex societal challenges. Design Thinking is widely used to support this ambition, but many approaches originate in design disciplines and are applied as generic educational models across a wide range of professional programmes.

Research within NHL Stenden’s Design-Based Education professorship shows that professions differ considerably in how design is practised, learned and valued. This calls for an approach to design education that takes these differences into account.

Building on several years of DBE research, the project develops an educational framework that connects design education with professional practice and explicitly supports students’ professional identity development. The framework is intended to help programmes across the university put NHL Stenden’s educational strategy into practice and contribute knowledge relevant to higher education in the Netherlands and internationally.

Which problem does the project address?

Higher education increasingly expects graduates from every discipline to help shape professional and societal change. However, existing Design Thinking approaches were not developed for every profession. As a result, some students struggle to see how design relates to their future profession, lack a shared language for discussing design, or follow learning pathways that do not sufficiently reflect professional practice.

(D)BE the Change addresses this by developing an evidence-informed framework that allows programmes to adapt design education to their own disciplinary context while maintaining a shared institutional vision. By connecting design education with professional identity development, the project supports students in understanding both how to design solutions and who they are as designing professionals.

How does the project team approach this?

The project follows a Design-Based Research approach. Lecturers, students, researchers and programme teams work together in iterative cycles to design, implement, evaluate and refine educational innovations.

Together, they develop a Framework for Educating the Designing Professional with five connected building blocks:

• Designing Professional Profiles
• Design Value Rubrics
• Curricular Design Learning Pathways
• Aligned Studio Models
• A Repertoire for Becoming Designing Professionals

The innovations are piloted in bachelor’s and master’s programmes and evaluated through questionnaires, focus groups, panel discussions and collaborative curriculum design sessions.

The project is led by Migchiel van Diggelen, Professor of Design-Based Education at NHL Stenden. The multidisciplinary team brings together expertise in educational innovation, design education, professional identity development and design-driven innovation. Team members are Derek Kuipers, Jose Middendorp, Matthias Olthaar, Saskia Oosterhoff, Hiltsje Pritchard, Riemke van der Meer and Daan Levy.

Teacher design teams co-design, test and refine the innovations. Students contribute through pilot implementations, questionnaires, focus groups and evaluation sessions. The project is strategically supported by NHL Stenden’s Executive Board.

What are the main or expected results?

The project will deliver a new Framework for Educating the Designing Professional. It will give programmes practical, evidence-informed tools to move beyond generic Design Thinking towards design education that reflects the needs of different professional fields.

The framework consists of Designing Professional Profiles, Design Value Rubrics, Curricular Design Learning Pathways, aligned Studio Models and a Repertoire for Becoming Designing Professionals. Together, these resources support curriculum design, assessment, coaching and students’ professional identity development.

The framework will help programmes put Design-Based Education into practice in ways that suit their own disciplinary context while maintaining a shared institutional vision. The project also aims to develop transferable design principles, knowledge and practical resources for NHL Stenden and other Universities of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands and beyond.