Abstract:

The Design, Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship (DICE) class is a new elective course offered to senior high school students at Philippine Science High School. The main objective of the course is to empower the students with the confidence to use their knowledge to approach and solve problems that they may or may not have encountered before. Local settings, qualitative research, and indigenous practices are mixed with science, technology, and design to address everyday human needs: health, education, nutrition, transportation, and environment. The class is structured as such: students first undergo an Innovation Fundamentals module that introduces topics such as prototyping, empathy, design thinking, and action research. Afterwards, specific design disciplines (systems design, interface design, user experience design, product design) shall be matched with various local problems (improving homework, developing an efficient trash system, etc) that student teams shall try to solve.

The course strives for students to acquire technical design knowledge, a deep understanding and appreciation for research and prototyping, and most importantly, ingenuity to put their skills and contextual knowledge into practice. I argue that this course will not only provide students with rich experiences on problem-based and constructivist learning, but it would also give them opportunities to survey various careers in design and technology that are highly lucrative and in demand (IT, product design, engineering).

This study aims to present the process of designing, prototyping, and improve the course. Moreover, it will also evaluate the efficacy of the course curriculum—can innovation and creativity be taught? What pedagogies and strategies can support creativity in the classroom? Another major question the study has is about utilising local context—how can the concept of innovation be demonstrated more effectively to Filipino students? How can we harness indigenous knowledge and limitations of being a developing country to highlight resilience and resourcefulness? Finally, the study will assess whether the course is successful in motivating students to explore college majors and careers in IT, product design, and engineering—is DICE a great way to inspire young innovators and entrepreneurs?

Keywords:

Design, innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, filipino, philippines, high school, problem-based, constructivist.