Abstract:

In light of current economic, social, cultural, and technological implications, new ways in which society transfers, produces, and exchanges knowledge are emerging. The increased mobility of global flows, the new relationships between local and global dimensions, the interconnections between physical and digital, the centrality of the service system and the confirmed role of individuals as co-producers of meanings and values within the contemporary production system require a specular reflection on higher education models to effectively face contemporary challenges.

In this context, the didactics of design, and in particular the didactics of design for the fashion system, finds itself operating in a highly interdisciplinary context, involving different areas of expertise, codified and tacit knowledge, a growing hybridisation of professional figures which are required on the one hand to be highly specialised, and on the other to manage complex and blurred situations. Within this framework, the fashion industry continues to reinvent itself in complex and holistic ways, and the fashion retail context, especially, is undergoing significant transformation due to the arising of innovative technologies.

This challenge which shows a robust multidisciplinary nature can be approached in Design higher education courses with an Experiential and Learning by Doing approach. Doing so can instigate collaborative group work dynamics, as well as question the transformation in the way of conceiving learning, encouraging academics to improve critical thinking. This approach inserts the student into the centre of the process. While investigating complex themes and product-systems, the knowledge is acquired attentively reasoned to implement an efficient learning approach. In such a methodology, the student plays a crucial role in producing his/her own knowledge, confronting multiple learning models and evaluation methods, while the teacher plays a facilitating part, encouraging the development of critical thinking. A relevant parcel of this organisation regards the evaluation processes that can potentially spark the student’s motivation to learn. In that sense, course and peer evaluations are appropriate tools that invite the students to critique the work from the evaluator’s point of view, stimulating the development of skills in providing feedback to educators and the ability to self-assess to improve their own project.

With regards to this, the present paper debates the relevance of the student’s role as a collaborator in evaluating and improving didactic approaches, proposing a dual point of view, that of the educator and that of the student. Specifically, this paper discusses how student feedback can be implemented in an iterative process of didactic redesign that, starting from its implementation in a design studio held in the “Design for the Fashion System” MSc Programme at Politecnico di Milano, can be shared and socialised at the level of the entire study programme.

Keywords:

Design Education, Learning by Doing, Multiple Evaluation Models, Collaborative learning strategies, Fashion System Retail Design.