In higher education, different barriers have challenged and still challenge bachelor, master, and Ph.D. students in conducting and applying DSR. This project had the following objectives: 1) Identification of the state-of-the-art of DSR materials. 2) Development of material to preserve unique DSR knowledge. 3) Design and implementation of a digital format in a DSR Academy. 4) Application and evaluation of the designed academy for carrying out DSR courses. 5) Communication and dissemination of the results of the project. The DSR Academy project tackles these challenges by creating a comprehensive curriculum with three key components: (1) interviews with iconic DSR authors, (2) interactive self-assessment learning videos, and (3) hands-on projects for practical knowledge transfer. This structure allows easy integration into face-to-face classes while creating a centralized knowledge repository.
Information Systems students and doctoral candidates frequently struggle with implementing theoretical concepts in practice and evaluating them with users, often lacking necessary methodological skills. Design Science Research (DSR) addresses this gap by providing a framework for conducting rigorous research on real-world design problems, generating prescriptive knowledge about IS artifacts like software, methods, and models. Despite DSR's value in solving practical challenges and its strong methodological foundations supporting publication in top venues, its teaching remains inconsistent. The abundance of materials, courses, and papers creates difficulty in selecting high-quality resources and applying them to specific projects. The Academy serves three critical needs: First, it provides a pooled contact point for DSR materials, making decades of accumulated knowledge accessible. Second, it establishes a foundation for consistent DSR education, balancing classroom and self-study approaches. Finally, it fosters knowledge accumulation by creating a bundled source that facilitates knowledge reuse, addressing a significant barrier to advancing DSR research.