Exploration of Curriculum Design Based on Q-methodology -focused on interdisciplinarity IPR of creative product design course

Recently, interdisciplinary education reform to improve students’ comprehensive technical skills has been prevalent in design higher education around the world. It leads to ambiguity of traditional academic boundaries and complexity of problems due to globalization. The knowledge economy forms a close relationship between design and intellectual property right (IPR) protection, and it is very important to integrate IPR education into design majors. The purpose of this study is to explore specific ways to IPR into creative product design curriculum in the Chinese educational model. This paper adopts a mixed research approach, which includes Outcome Based Education (OBE) and Bloom’s Taxonomy (BT) and Q-methodology, innovatively applies these three theories to the implementation path model. The specific research process includes the use of Q methodology to collect students’ attitudes toward learning and willingness to acquire new content, and to differentiate the levels of courses based on course content and tasks. The process of Q methodology includes the following steps: 1) Conduct literature review and interviews to collect Q matrices based on OBE objectives; 2) Form a Q sample to determine the P-set; 3) Have respondents rank Q statements according to their level of agreement or disagreement; 4) Develop Quanl operations and factor analysis to identify the two types. This step is crucial to understand the underlying structure of the Q data and to identify the different perspectives present in the sample; 5) Develop BT-graded instructional (assessment) objectives that incorporate the characteristics of each type and the distinctly different attitudes toward key Q issues. The results of the study show that applying Q methodology to OBE and BT helps to develop targeted instructional activities based on improving property rights literacy, bridging the gap between instructional goals and assessment, implementing instructional practices based on scientific analysis of learning conditions.We provide a practical reference sample for future interdisciplinary curriculum innovation.