Design Thinking: Problem Solving for Performance. 3 credits, 3 contact hours

Catalog description

Prerequisites: ENGL 101 with a grade of C or higher and one 200-level History and Humanities GER course. Pre or Corequisites: ENGL 102 with grade of C or higher. Design Thinking is more than just a process—it’s a mindset for listening to and approaching the world. This course is a beginning in a lifelong pursuit of discovering meaning in the components of the material world, rummaging for metaphors and symbols in the images that bombard us incessantly. In this hands-on course, students will explore the principles and impact of patterns, building a metaphysical knowledge of how to distinguish signal from noise, sense from senselessness, and play with our brains’ trained pattern recognition mechanisms to communicate, affect, and solve complex problems. The course fosters empathy, constant questioning, paying close attention, learning through failure and response, abstracting the parameters of the situation, and offering the next possible manifestation.