Call for Submissions：LEARN x DESIGN 2021: 6th International Conference for Design Education Researchers

Engaging with Challenges in Design Education | Shandong University of Art & Design, Jinan, China

Shandong University of Art & Design (SUAD) is the host of the LEARNxDESIGN 2021: 6th International Conference for Design Education Researchers (LxD.2021). The conference overall theme is Engaging with Challenges in Design Education.

Shandong University of Art & Design conference venue located in Jinan. The city has long history of more than 3000 years and it is the ‘home’ of Confucius. Jinan is situated at the northeast of China with over 8 million inhabitants.

There are over 2000 Design Schools in China. Shandong University of Art & Design (SUAD) is amongst the top ten Design Schools in China. It has over 7000 students and close to 700 staff members. The university offers 53 Bachelor’s degree and 20 Master’s degree programmes. In 2018 SUAD received 75 000 student applications, of these 1 600 students have been accepted.

In 2016 the Chinese Ministry of Education has included the Design discipline to the “Special Catalogue of General Colleges and Universities” with aim to scale up the design education. Since 2016, more than 2,000 of institutions have been delivering design programmes. Every year more than 540,000 students enroll into Design programmes.

The number of students studying design and related majors in the school now exceeds 2 million. The design discipline has become the most prominent one in more than 140 first-level disciplines and more than 90 undergraduate majors in China.

Professor Xu, a scholar in the design education, stated that under the current economic and social development situation in China, scale of design education will increase in the future. Thus, design researcher educators will have a profound impact on the future of China’s design discipline development. Especially now that countries around the world generally emphasise innovation driven. Therefore, the discipline of design should be based on the needs of social development and conceive a knowledge prospect that is forward-looking and realistically connected in the future. This is a key issue that cannot be avoided by design education today.

To address the outlined context, we would like to propose the following 2021 conference theme: Engaging with Challenges in Design Education

Over the past 4 months invited leading international scholars articulated eleven Track themes which form the backbone for the LxD.2021 Call for the Contributions.

Track Themes

Track 01 | Design Thinking to Improve Creative Problem-solving

Track 02 | Empowering Critical Design Literacy

Track 03 | Alternative Problem Framing in Design Education

Track 04 | Collaboration in Design Education

Track 05 | Co-creation of Interdisciplinary Design Educations

Track 06 | Learning Through Materiality and Making

Track 07 | Sketching & Drawing Education and Knowledge

Track 08 | Educating Data-driven Design Innovation

Track 09| Design Learning Environments

Track 10 | Futures of Design Education

Track 11 | Design Educators as Change Agents

Call for Contributions

»Papers »Case Studies »Workshops »Visual Papers

Detailed outlines for the eleven Track themes and requirements for each submission type are provided：https://learnxdesign.net/lxd2021/.

You are encouraged to explore the Tracks’ scope in a more detail including the list of four submissions categories and requirements for each. You will also find a link which will enable you to download a Template to format your contribution which you will need to submit by 23 March 2021. You can always get in touch by emailing us on lxd2021@learnxdesign.net.