Abstract:

In 2018, during a period characterised by significant transformations in the labour market, wherein the convergence of technological competencies, creative skills, and critical thinking became increasingly crucial (World Economic Forum, 2018), Politecnico di Milano embarked upon a steadfast commitment to adopt constant innovation through new interdisciplinary and flexible approaches. These approaches were founded upon a heightened interplay between technology and sciences, alongside the development of innovative teaching initiatives. The university pursued this reflection on innovation by implementing a three-year plan to innovate various aspects of educational activities, targeting curricular and extracurricular teaching through infrastructural and procedural interventions.
Among the various activities undertaken, Politecnico di Milano launched an initiative named "Passion in Action - PA," a catalogue of freely participatory educational activities offered to all students. The primary objective of the PA is to foster the development of cross-cutting competencies, soft skills, and social skills, thereby encouraging and facilitating personal interests and attitudes. These integrated activities implemented the formal curriculum and are acknowledged in the diploma supplement that certifies the students' educational journey.
The School of Design of the Politecnico di Milano, known for its longstanding teaching and learning approach rooted in the "epistemology of praxis," wherein field experimentation and international openness intertwine with an "Italian approach" (Collina, 2017), has wholeheartedly embraced the university's vision of educational innovation. Within the PA program, the School of Design wishes to offer a personalised educational path through an informal teaching approach. Informal learning represents a non-didactic, highly socially collaborative type of learning embedded within meaningful activities, initiated by the learners' interests or choices, and exempt from the external evaluation (Callanan et al., 2011).
In this paper, the authors intend to illustrate the implementation of the PA initiative by presenting a case study named "Design Explorer - DE", developed by the School of Design in 2021 and still being offered within the innovative educational paths promoted by the school. DE is a program that pursues three distinct objectives. Firstly, it aims to provide a rich program of events and activities to stimulate students to explore design in its diverse forms. Secondly, it invites students to venture beyond the formal confines of the campus and discover the city of Milan, renowned as the global capital of design (milano.corriere.it, 2023), along with the places, also found in other cities, dedicated to design and the associated cultural and disciplinary contexts also in other cities. Lastly, it aims to enhance individual passions and aptitudes by enabling the realisation of their informal educational path.
Furthermore, this paper describes the program construction, promotion, participation, and certification system, adopting specific communication tools and involving various academic and institutional stakeholders. The authors hope that recounting the implementation protocol of this program can be valuable to all design educational institutions aspiring to develop innovative and informal educational paths.

Keywords:

Informal learning, teaching and learning innovation, educational programs, design education.