Students, academics and a community organisation are reaping the rewards of a successful transdisciplinary course recently hosted by CPUT.
A total of 21 participants attended the Sustainable Product Service Systems (S.PSS) course, which was entitled: Methods and tools for community based research projects: Distributed design and distributed information for volunteer organisations in SA.
Ephias Ruhode, Associate Professor: Transdisciplinary Studies in the Faculty of Informatics and Design (FID), said the participants learned design approaches and the toolbox to designing solutions for social innovation for sustainability.
The community partner for the course was Action Volunteers Africa (AVA), a community organisation that trains volunteers in a number of disciplines.
AVA mentors provided students with challenges facing their organisation and the participants had to use the tools that they were taught in the course to design solutions.
“Solutions which students designed ranged from business innovation, digital storytelling for volunteer self-improvement to sustainable ICT innovations,” said Ruhode.
The course facilitators came from China, Brazil, the Netherlands, Stellenbosch University and CPUT.
Ruhode said the course provided long-term benefits: “Beyond the course CPUT solution designers will continue to work with AVA until the solutions are developed and implemented. A PhD student and a Masters student have already begun to work on their theses based on the AVA challenges. Going forward, FID’s Department of Research, Innovation and Partnerships will design similar courses on transdisciplinary research to be offered to researchers across the university.”
The course was one of the activities of the Learning network of networks on sustainability (LeNSin) project.
According to its website LeNSin is an EU-supported (ERASMUS+) project involving 36 universities from Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and Central America, aiming at the promotion of a new generation of designers (and design educators) capable of effectively contributing to the transition towards a sustainable society for all.
- CPUT and Stellenbosch University are the South African partners in the LeNSin project. Prof Ruhode is the African coordinator of the project.
