Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted universities and required faculties to envision new educational models for a more resilient didactic structure. In particular, the lack of knowledge regarding how to face post-pandemic education required significant exploration and analysis of future directions for didactics. In addition to the numerous reflections, the pandemic emergency has also revealed the extent of technology's influence on every area of our lives (Mandarano 2019; Gere 2009), changing the nature of our activities, their relevance, and our qualities as their adopters (Steele 2001).

Within this context, the Politecnico di Milano began a process of auditing the various experiences developed during previous semesters in the different schools. The School of Design decided to create a participatory approach in order to be able to listen to the whole design community: several workshops have been held, involving more than 500 teaching personnel and 4,000 students expressing their opinions.

This human-centred methodology was proposed to stimulate conversation among diverse peer types who are perceived as the ones “who face those problems every day are the ones who hold the key to their answer” (IDEO 2015).

The intention was to draw attention to worries over the potential of digital technology in higher education and the current standard of online courses and student experiences: What actually happens? Has the global health crisis ushered in novel possibilities for campus life and higher education, or is it merely speeding up an already well-established digital evolution? Has COVID-19 revealed any previously hidden tendencies or patterns? The conceptual basis for creating the participatory process and the tools described in the article are found in these questions.

The working team started data processing as a result of the participative process, focusing on two strictly qualitative components of analysis: horizontal (identifying the similarities and offering a synthesis of the data) and vertical (highlighting the originality and diversity of the data). This resulted in a comprehensive multi-layered framework of the emerging complexities that could capture interdisciplinary connections, reveal meaning clusters, and expose recurrences and exceptions to educational digital transition.

The analysis resulted in 6 scenarios that aim to outline future trajectories, prepare the school to adapt to the coming transformation and define the setting of the future didactic.

This paper intends to illustrate the process of modelling a co-design process and its components, valorising the good practices and identifying specific issues that emerged during the pandemic. It does so through the definition of a “process model”, the realization of an “operative tool” and the description of a framework for envisioning future didactic solutions based on the varying concentration of 3 components: “online”, “offline”, and “onsite”.

Keywords:

Design Education, Co-design, Participatory Process.