Real-World Learning and its conceptual frames: Considering Design ‘Impact Labs’ as a case in practice

This paper considers four undergraduate transdisciplinary design ‘Impact Labs’, Place, People, Planet and Purpose within a wider analysis of sector-wide interpretations of real-world learning and an accompanying conceptual framework.

Calls to ‘future-proof’ design students’ knowledge, skills, capabilities and careers provided the impetus to develop the labs as core to a Bachelor of Design degree at QUT (Queensland University of Technology), Australia (Meth and Brough, 2023). Inquiry-led team design challenges focus on real-world problems with external partners, and students are stepped through design theories, tools and collaborative approaches in preparation for these.

As context for this work, QUT’s tagline, ‘the university for the real world’, plays out through a set of measured ‘real-world’ expectations for all courses - a vision reflecting employer and societal needs. There exists more broadly however, some confusion in interpreting ‘real world’, frequently seen as synonymous with experiential, authentic and applied, with a tendency towards the performative (Meth, 2023). Questions of exclusion, for knowledge, curricula and learning deemed to be ‘not real’ also come into play. Wheelahan (2009) attributes this lack of clarity to the fact that experiential learning may align with either social constructivist or instrumentalist sentiments (p.227). And research conducted with students in the ‘real world’ Impact Labs similarly evidences this spectrum of interpretations in relation to the term ‘impact’ (Meth, Brophy and Thomson, 2023).

To offer conceptual clarity, these educational endeavours are situated within a modified Clark triangle conceptual framework (Clark, 1983; Meth, 2024) where tensions in the multiple definitions of real-world learning and its impacts might be acknowledged. Curricula and pedagogies that offer balance to these endpoint tensions are seen to offer ‘ideal’ transformative educational experiences. In this way, reconciliation is achieved between the practical intent of real-world educational approaches, and a theoretical construct that might support these.