Can a Joint Online Project Between ITESO and Parsons Students Help Challenge Design for Sustainability?

Case study: Raz Godelnik (Parsons School of Design) and Jared Jiménez Rodríguez (ITESO, Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara)

Abstract

The need to make design more diverse and equitable has never been greater with the growing recognition of how current design methods and frameworks support rather than challenge existing systems of power. This is also the case when it comes to design for sustainability (DfS), which for the most part is still grounded in mental models reinforcing neoliberal economic thinking. As a result, DfS supports what we consider as “sustainability-as-usual,” i.e. sustainability solutions that are still dominated by shareholder capitalism and thus generate mostly incremental results that do little to help the historically disadvantaged.

Struggling with these questions and challenges in our own courses, we were wondering if getting students to collaborate with students from another university in another country could be helpful. In other words, we wanted to see if getting students from different universities and cultural settings to work together on a sustainable design project could result in outcomes that move beyond sustainability-as-usual. Inspired by the vision of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) to help create a different type of learning environment, one that is more equitable and collaborative, we created a joint project that brought together design students from ITESO (Mexico) and Parsons (USA). Entitled “Sustainable Design for the 2020s” the joint project aimed at building on the growing digital savviness of the students, which was the result of a forced shift into online learning during the pandemic. It was our hope that the mastery of digital tools has made students more comfortable with online work and collaboration, helping make collaboration with students outside their class and university a pretty seamless task. The project itself brought together 24 students from ITESO and 18 students from Parsons, which were divided into small teams with one student from Parsons and one or two from ITESO. The teams were asked to address sustainability challenges from diverse points of view, considering not only the process of developing and designing sustainable solutions but also the context of these solutions, both local and global. With these considerations in mind, teams were tasked to identify a systematic and critical sustainability problem, research three approaches that are currently used to solve the problem and offer their own solution. Teams were asked to propose solutions that offer meaningful change, not incremental one, and consider among other things how social justice, inclusion, and equity considerations are embedded in their proposal. The delivery of this two-months long project was a recorded presentation that provide an overview of their work, including their research and proposed solution. The case study will present the results of the joint project. One question that we look into is whether the collaborative work has met our expectations and generated work that challenges the status quo in substantive ways. We will examine the value of diverse points of view situated in different cultures and local settings when it comes to addressing global sustainability issues. Last but not least, we will share insights on the effectiveness of online collaboration.