Student-created Canvases as a Way to Inform Decision-making in a Capstone Design Sequence

摘要

Canvases are becoming more prominent in a variety of curricular and extracurricular educational settings (Blank, 2013; Kline et al., 2014; Hixson et al., 2015). This prominence manifests in multiple forms including: the increasing use of certain canvases (e.g., the Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010)) in university settings and, as a quick internet search will reveal, the increasing number of unique canvases that are being developed to address specific needs/contexts. At their most fundamental level, a canvas is a one-page visual framework modeling the critical elements of a real-world system. The elements chosen are those that the canvas' creator(s) have deemed essential in order to design, add value or make changes to a system out in the world. Visually, a canvas is often divided into segments, with each segment corresponding to one of the elements that should be considered. Based on this structure and our experience using canvases in educational settings, a canvas can · Focus a learner, change agent, or innovator on the most important levers within a system · Support the collection and synthesis of information · Reveal where critical information is missing · Provide individuals with a framework for making decisions · Offer a holistic view of both a system and a solution/opportunity.