CIRRUS is a Nordic-Baltic network of Art and Design higher education. There are 20 excellent art and design schools from the Nordics and the Baltics in the circle of this cooperation. The central activities of the partner institutions are art and design, including innovative activities, technical development and artistic practices.

CIRRUS Talk 4: The SWITCH: Adapting design education to the virtual classroom

WHEN: Apr 16, 2021
09:00 AM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna / CET
10: 00 EET / 7: 00 Iceland
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The SWITCH: Adapting design education to the virtual classroom 

In the past one year, we as teachers have been faced with many similar and unique challenges to adjust, modify or reorganise our conventional ways of working in the design education. While most of us tried to maintain the content and structure our courses, many new tools and platforms had to be learnt, which required reforming our own working styles for a careful and smooth transition of the courses needed to adapt rather rapidly, into this new online format. Several new features and online experiences were also discovered to communicate with the students, resulting us to be engaged with extended working hours and higher screen time. Not only that, many of the tried and tested methods, material and medium oriented tasks had to be replaced with new ones in order to prepare, operate and evaluate the outcomes aligned with the overall course objectives. This shift has definitely provided us with directions and insights to reflect on our own pedagogical approaches and their impact, while addressing several unanticipated issues to redefine, differentiate or demarcate the boundaries essential for physical, hybrid and virtual classrooms that would be useful to implement in future.

Jasjit Singh and Charlotte Sjödell from Lund University will host this upcoming Cirrus seminar. They will share some case studies from the past year and reflections on how it has worked to teach both project based courses as well as skill based courses in sketching and form development. After their presentation the participants will be able to share their hands-on experiences in regards of:

  • course content and structure 
  • tools, techniques and format
  • pedagogical strategies
  • results, outcomes and feedback
  • student/teacher psycho-social health
  • what worked: reflections and experiences
  • what may be useful to consider in future
Jasjit Singh and Charlotte Sjödell