Team Malawi

Senior Thesis Projects, by nature, are a great vessel for integrating project-based learning pedagogy. With my focus in healthcare and public health, I’ve been providing students in this studio with opportunities and access to external, industry resources to fulfill the requirements for experiential learning projects in ID.  Below in Figure 5 you can see two different projects that were integrated into ID senior thesis studio for students. On the left, “ZIDA: Neonatal Harness” (for monitoring vital signs in infants) was designed by two industrial design students, in collaboration with multiple faculty and industry professionals in TEAM Malawi as well as students from Biological Science, Mechanical Engineering, Masters of Public Health and the Carilion Medical School. This project is ongoing and the students’ concept was tested on users in Carilion Hospital. On the right you can see the concept designed by senior ID students based on a project that addressed particular community and user needs related to the home-birth process in Haiti. None of these experiences would have been possible if our students were not exposed to the requirements and pedagogy of project-based learning.