Abstract:

We live in a constantly changing historical moment; a time when the knowledge and skills proposed by teachers and expected by future professionals quickly become unstable or outdated. If these changes are not very visible in the first training cycles, where the objectives are "standardized" and remain such for the need to build a homogeneous "cultural background", they become more visible in the subsequent training cycles and universities, in which there is a greater need for updating compared to new professions and, therefore, greater competitiveness on the training offer.

In the latter realities, the teaching models are redesigned year by year to respond to the request for "soft skills" and "buzzwords" proposed (also) by the "market". A market that requires people more and more ready: at work, at team-building activities, in research and innovation. Particular mention it's a must for Universities that aim to offer transversal content, between creativity, technology and innovation, that recognized in the "laboratory format" an adequate method for teaching the practice for the project.

Compared to the more classic "frontal" method, theorized and optimized in the major pedagogical models to offer "vertical and indisputable" content, the laboratory method is based on the design of the training experience and the generation of content, acting as a metacognitive and cooperative activity. This is possible thanks to the maieutic approach used during laboratory activities that encourages learning both cognitively and relationally.
In this regard, it is easy to understand that the focus of training has shifted from "knowledge of content" towards the training of autonomous, active and proactive figures concerning content and discipline. For this reason, we can speak of "co-creation" or “cogeneration” training.

The experimentation of some models carried out during the laboratory courses, reported in the article through a list of case-histories, shows interesting results for the evolution of the discipline; both in terms of performance and objectives achieved, both for the updating in respect to new methods and tools that can be adopted by the young designer as well as by the trainer. In this sense, some "innovative teaching" practices, once optimized, have been proved particularly rewarding and effective, both in terms of hypotheses and objectives achieved: from the reinterpretation of the Munari method, used for the realization of food design activities, to the use of interconnected platforms for the management and implementation of teamwork; from the simulation of business meetings for the discussion of project proposals to the use of immersive virtual environments to co-design shared scenarios.

Through the mapping of targeted case histories and respective pedagogical models, this contribution will propose a training model useful for the discipline, a new way for new forms for design the teaching. Well aware that today it is no longer possible to take any "traditional" training model for granted given that the context because we are moving toward new practices, requires an even greater ability to adapt and the flexibility to face ever more unexpected and unpredictable situations. The development of the Internet and the web and the democratization of increasingly interconnected devices have opened up to new ways of teaching design, too. The challenge is precisely to manage knowledge, skills and technologies in a new way.

Keywords:

Innovative teaching, Technology-based Education, Teaching Toolkit.