Rethinking Experiential Learning in Design Education

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has generated serious consequences on the higher education sector, highlighting its existing vulnerabilities and forcing it to face complex challenges. However, the current situation can also be seen as an opportunity to deeply rethink the learning activities and the environments in which they are carried out, whether online or in the classroom, designing long-term innovation plans that extends beyond the end of the crisis. The paper aims to explore the process of redesigning an experiential and social learning course for an online learning modality. The reported case study, the Systemic Design course held in the M. Sc. in Systemic Design at Politecnico di Torino (Italy), was analysed in order to identify and address its main challenges, related to the redefinition of its learning activities and the improvement of the interaction and cooperation between the different actors in a context of social distancing. The project led to the adoption of new strategies and tools, tested on the course itself.