Warwick Economics Winner of WATE Collaborative Award 2024 - Designing Together

We congratulate Dr Lory Barile for being part of the winning Designing Together Team who have been recognised for excellence in running a collaborative project which brought together staff and students with expertise in design thinking from across the Higher Education sector to reimagine student roles in academic development.

The winning team consisted of staff and students with expertise in design thinking from across Warwick: Dr Lory Barile (Economics), Dr Bo Kelestyn (WBS), Jess Humphreys (Deputy Director of Warwick International Higher Education Academy), and two former students of Warwick: Inca Hide-Wright (BSc Psychology and MASc Community, Engagement and Belonging) and Nikita Asnani (BSc Economics and MSc Humanitarian Engineering with Sustainability).

In recent Masterclass Designing Together, the team described design thinking as 'a human-centred framework for understanding challenges, generating creative ideas, and developing solutions collaboratively' which forms 'a crucial capability for modern university leadership to embrace new possibilities for enhancing the student experience.'

Working collaboratively with HE colleagues from across the UK and beyond (Service Design in Higher Education Network, University of Lancaster, University of Leeds and University of Hull in the UK, as well as Helsinki Metropolitan University of Applied Sciences), the winning team developed a programme of events including coaching meetings, asynchronous resources and a symposium.

Student voice was key to the success of the project, and the student project officers were instrumental in engaging with the wider group of project participants through a series of focus groups (called facilitated conversations). The key outcomes of the project were:

• Developing resources form the meetings and the symposium.
• Setting up a community of practice on LinkedIn - Designing Together
• A podcast series created by the student officers - Designing Together Diaries
• A deck of cards as a resource to stimulate discussion, ideas and reflections on the design thinking process.

The Collaborative Awards category of the Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (WATE) aims to highlight the work of teams and groups of people who create teaching excellence and have a positive impact on student learning and the learning experience, and whose approach to collaborative working as well as their practices, behaviours and values are excellent. The winning Designing Together team were judged the top team in this category based on two criteria: excellence in the team's collaborative approach and excellence in the impact of their collaborative working.

Asked about the award, Dr Lory Barile commented:

"We're very proud of our work and extremely pleased that our project has been recognised by the WATE judges. What I find most valuable about our work is that the project has created a sustainable community of practice and started a series of collaborations between its participants. Together, we were able to critically evaluate design thinking approaches in relation to the learner experience and to highlight the benefits of collaboration within the community of practice. It has also given us a chance to achieve impact beyond Warwick."

We congratulate Dr Lory Barile and her colleagues from the Designing Together Team, and wish then further successes in the future.

Related content

The podcast Designing Together Diaries can be accessed via Spotify via this link

The Designing Together Group can be accessed via LinkedIn Group 

WATE Awards Winners 2024