Convivial Education: An Autoethnography of Integrating Visual Arts and Design Thinking into STEM through Art Museum-Based Education

We describe and reflect upon the experience of co-creating a student-lead research project on designing a museum-based workshop on formal art and design analysis for undergraduate STEM students in a design thinking course. The creation of the workshop precipitates a conversation between two educators and the student on the value and challenge of facilitating a convivial education with undergraduate students in an era of industrialized learning. As an autoethnography on the experience of supporting STEAM and art museum-based education, the authors narrate the process of collaboratively defining the need and opportunity for a novel educational experience, designing a three-hour workshop, and reflecting on what was meaningful in their hopes of enacting a convivial education. Through the encouragement to look again, take perspectives other than one’s own, and continually tinker and experiment with ideas, we suggest that the visual arts and design thinking enables educators and students to remain curious, resist welcome reflective pause rather than quick solutions, and open the possibility for being transformed in the process.