ABSTRACT
Public interest design courses can transform students’ understanding of their future roles as agents of change for design practice and their communities. Evaluating whether or not courses have effectively achieved this potential requires going beyond assessing the professional competence of design products. It requires examining learning processes, including experiences and reflections, to determine how these have affected students’ understanding of their relationships to community partners, their roles as designers, and how these can affect change in and via the built environment. This section presents three examples of engaged design courses that illustrate how student learning evaluation can impact not only student learning but also the well-being of communities and the relationships between higher education and society.
