Biomimicry education is grounded in a set of natural design principles common to every known lifeform on Earth. These Life’s Principles (LPs) (cc Biomimicry 3.8), provide guidelines for emulating sustainable strategies that are field-tested over nearly four billion years of evolution. This study evaluates an exercise for teaching LPs to interdisciplinary students at three universities, Arizona State University (ASU) in Phoenix, Arizona (USA), College of Charleston (CofC) in Charleston, South Carolina (USA) and The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS) in The Hague (The Netherlands) during the spring 2021 semester. Students researched examples of both biological organisms and human designs exhibiting the LPs. We gauged the effectiveness of the exercise through a common rubric and a survey to discover ways to improve instruction and student understanding. Increased student success was found to be directly linked to introducing the LPs with illustrative examples, assigning an active search for examples as part of the exercise, and utilizing direct assessment feedback loops. Requiring students to highlight the specific terms of the LP sub-principles in each example is a suggested improvement to the instructions and rubric. An iterative, face-to-face, discussion-based teaching and learning approach helps overcome minor misunderstandings. Reiterating the LPs throughout the semester with opportunities for application will highlight the potential for incorporating LPs into students’ future sustainable design process. Stevens LL, Fehler M, Bidwell D, Singhal A, Baumeister D. Building from the Bottom Up: A Closer Look into the Teaching and Learning of Life’s Principles in Biomimicry Design Thinking Courses. Biomimetics. 2022; 7(1):25. https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics7010025
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Students who experience high well-being are better able to developthemselvesand performwithin their educational program. Personal resources can be developed with interventions and more developed personal resources can contribute to well-being. However, it is not yet sufficiently clear what theseinterventions should look like to be effective. Therefore, this study focuses on formulating design principles for interventions aimed at developing four personal resources of honorsstudents: self-efficacy, optimism, inquiry mindedness, and self-regulation. Data were collectedviafocus groups. Data showed that design principles for interventions to develop those four personal resources differsomewhat, but also have several aspects in common: they combine group and individual activities, students are taught basic skills to help them directing their own development, they have an ongoing character and consist of recurring activities. The design principles can be used to design interventions to enhancehonors students’personal resources. Further research is needed into the design and effects of these interventions and possible generalisationof the design principles to other contexts.
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It is becoming clear that the project management practice must embrace sustainability in order to develop into a 'true profession' (Silvius et al., 2012). In project management, sustainability can be gained in both the product of the project and in the process of delivering the product. (Gareis et al., 2010) Nine sustainability principles have been identified that should be implemented in the project management practice. These nine principles are: (1) values and ethics; (2) holistic approach; (3) long term view; (4) large scale; (5) risk reduction; (6) participation; (7) accountability; (8) transparency; (9) stakeholder interest. In a case study it is researched which project and program management roles can exert an influence to have the sustainability principles implemented in the project management practice and how they can accomplish this implementation.
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