Engineering Design Thinking and Making: Online Transdisciplinary Teaching and Learning in a Covid-19 Context

Abstract

This paper introduces an engineering design thinking and making course that has been taught at Beijing Normal University since 2019. In its 2-year journey and iterations, both teachers and students learn to dance with ambiguity, collaborate in teams, build to think, and make ideas real. They embrace engineering design thinking and making and experience the maker culture of the China-US young maker competition in this 16-week semester-long course. This year because of the Covid-19, the innovative course changed to online teaching. The course focus on people’s basic needs during the Covid-19, including study, fitness, shopping, entertainments and long-distance relation-ships and communication with family members. Student teams collaborate online to solve the special challenges of Covid-19 in innovative ways and de-liver functional proof-of-concept prototypes along with in-depth documenta-tion that not only captures the essence of designs but the learnings that led to the ideas.