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the paper address about final project topic selection?","Question",{"text":62,"@type":63},"Students often struggle to choose a final project topic due to a lack of a defining framework that clarifies how different topics can become impactful over short, mid, and long terms.","Answer",{"name":65,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":66},"How does the Impact Plan tool work?",{"text":67,"@type":63},"It is a visual tool that simplifies choosing a project by matching its anticipated impact with students’ motivations, capacities, ambitions, and perceptions of value.",{"name":69,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":70},"What evidence is provided for the tool’s usefulness?",{"text":71,"@type":63},"A prototype was designed and tested with students in a creative postgraduate course during the UK’s first 2020 lockdown restrictions, and it helped students align topic choices with interests, career ambitions, and a contribution to a better 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Portugal  \nAbstract  \nUniversity students often struggle with choosing a topic for their final projects due to the lack of a supporting and defining framework for said selection. Should the student be oriented toward reflecting on how each of the possible topics to choose from can become an impactful project in the short, mid and long run, maybe that selection becomes a less anxious moment and the engagement with the project activities more relevant and meaningful to the student, being particularly pertinent when students can anticipate different levels of impact that range from their own life to a wider community.  \nIn this paper a visual tool is proposed, aiming at simplifying the moment of choosing a project by matching its anticipated impact with the users’ motivations, capacities, ambitions, and perceptions of value. A prototype was designed and tested with a group of students enrolled ata creative postgraduate course, in a professionalisation-led module, under the UK’s first 2020 lockdown restrictions. The tool proved helpful in supporting the students’ decision making when having to select a topic to be developed in the context of a communication design project, and to which they were able to align their personal interests, their career ambitions, and the way they perceived themselves as contributing to a better world. Since this is a cyclical experience, both during a design learning environment, but also in design practice, the Impact Plan, which was conceived with design students in mind, configures as fully replicable in other academic (and professional) contexts too.  \nKeywords  \nDesign Thinking, Impact Assessment, Purpose, Project Selection, Speculation, Post-pandemic.  \nIntroduction  \nWhilst academic achievement is still understood as a significant metric for employability, students increasingly see the need to add value to such achievements, to gain an advantage in the job market (Berger & Wild, 2017) . At a time when they face the threats brought by the predicted high levels of automation, and now the impact of the COVID-19, those graduating amid the pandemic face the enduring and still unknown implications of this enormous split the world is experiencing – and that will shape their understanding of society as a functional system. In normal circumstances, there is always a great deal of uncertainty when entering the workforce after graduation; for those graduating soon or in the next couple of years, that uncertainty goes beyond the short-term issue of finding their first job, because nobody knows what the (job) market will look like post-pandemic. It is, maybe, the right moment to reassess priorities and the perceived notion of value.  \nThis research intended outcome is an impact-led tool to connect students' reflective practice with their pre-professional identity, aiming at anticipating (and speculating on) the short,  \nmedium, and long-term outcomes their projects will have in their lives and the lives of others. It aims at providing students in final years of both undergraduate and postgraduate studies with a design thinking structure for reflecting, planning, and prioritising their experiences for heightened employability, guiding them through the essential contexts in which their final projects can trigger or build on some impact.  \nThe world needs design (thinking) more than ever  \nAccording to Watts (2006), paying more attention to students’ employability responds to their principal motivations for enrolling on Higher Education (HE) courses. The latter are described by Smith (2016) and Leman (2018) as leading individuals to enhancing achievements at work, progressing in the current career path, gaining access to better employment, and developing talent and creativity. These motivations are, supposedly, instructed by a pre-professional identity which entails a self-understanding of the","cbCaigH7a7bzrbVV","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaigH7a7bzrbVV","pdf",506557,16,"English","# Introduction\n## The world needs design (thinking) more than ever","[{\"question\":\"What problem does the paper address about final project topic selection?\",\"answer\":\"Students often struggle to choose a final project topic due to a lack of a defining framework that clarifies how different topics can become impactful over short, mid, and long terms.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the Impact Plan tool work?\",\"answer\":\"It is a visual tool that simplifies choosing a project by matching its anticipated impact with students’ motivations, capacities, ambitions, and perceptions of value.\"},{\"question\":\"What evidence is provided for the tool’s usefulness?\",\"answer\":\"A prototype was designed and tested with students in a creative postgraduate course during the UK’s first 2020 lockdown restrictions, and it helped students align topic choices with interests, career ambitions, and a contribution to a better world.\"}]","The Impact Plan - Anticipating the Impact of University Students’ Final Projects | PDF",1792090045]