Industrial Design education is poorly understood by laypeople but is present in Australian curricula from primary through to tertiary education levels. Designers and design researchers have long recognised the value of the broad-ranging skills, knowledge fields, and personal qualities design education imparts, but this understanding is generally…

There is a significant amount of research into gender differences in academic performance in the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) fields. This has identified important differences between the academic achievement of men and women as measured through grade point averages and time to completion. However, the specific STEM fields of…

Despite over three decades of legislation and initiatives designed to tackle the traditional gender divide in the science, technology and design fields, only a quarter of the registered architects in Australia are women. There are no statistics available for other design disciplines, with little known about why women choose design as a career path…

This paper narrates a case study on design thinking based education work in an industrial design honours program. Student projects were developed in a multi-disciplinary setting across a Computing and Engineering faculty that allowed promoting technologically and user driven innovation strategies. A renewed culture and environment for Industrial…

Purpose: This paper narrates a case study on design thinking-based education work in an industrial design honours program. Student projects were developed in a multi-disciplinary setting across a Computing and Engineering faculty that allowed promoting technologically and user-driven innovation strategies. Design/methodology/approach: A renewed…

How do we create female inclusive participation within industrial design and technology in Australian school settings, with a curriculum which is consistent, relevant, innovative and cognitively challenging? We argue that the curriculum must be engaging and in step with international standards based on actual classroom practices, centred on deep…

This article explores project-based cross-cultural and cross-institutional learning. Using Web 2.0 technologies, this project involved more than 240 students and eighteen academic staff from seven international universities. The focus of this article relates to a project-based learning activity named "The Gift". At each institution the…

Following an introduction, Volume 1 of this year's annual report from the Commissioner of Education contains the first of three parts. Part I includes chapters on: statistics of state common school systems; secondary education in New Zealand; education in France; educational systems of England and Scotland, and operations for 1890-'91; provision…

Purpose: The paper intends to determine the extent to which environmental sustainability issues are integrated in the curricula of industrial design programs in Australian universities. Design/methodology/approach: Industrial design lecturers and program heads were invited to participate in a web-based survey on their university's industrial…

In the relatively new discipline of design education we have the opportunity to frame the way that design education is formulated. The relative lack of theorists in the field of design education studies leaves unquestioned the relevance of conventional practices of design education that are premised on only tangentially relevant Art, Science and…

These proceedings contain the papers and posters of the International Conferences on Internet Technologies & Society (ITS 2016), Educational Technologies (ICEduTech 2016) and Sustainability, Technology and Education (STE 2016), which have been organised by the International Association for Development of the Information Society and…

Begun in 1978 to bring manual arts experience to children in Queensland's "disadvantaged country areas," the Mobile Manual Arts Unit by the end of the 1980 school year had visited 16 separate locations, involving 25 different schools. A total of 727 students had participated (out of a target population of 992 pupils) and a total of 259…