BE OPEN: What Is Instagram’s Place in Design Education? 23 November 2021 To many, social media and education may seem like unlikely bedfellows. Formal design education is mostly localized, taking place inside of institution walls. It’s an opportunity to study, learn, experiment, and grow, and to do so within a community that can provide critical feedback. By contrast, Instagram is global, instant,… Read more →
BE OPEN: the Future of Education as seen by UNESCO’s Special Commission and nine ideas for post-COVID action 6 November 2021 The global health pandemic has shined a harsh light on the vulnerabilities and challenges humanity faces. It has provided a clear picture of existing inequalities—and a clearer picture of what steps forward we need to take, chief among them addressing the education of more than 1.5 billion students whose learning… Read more →
BE OPEN: Ingrained Assumptions that Challenge Higher Education 24 October 2021 How best to adapt to today’s post-Golden Age realities, according to professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin Steven Mintz. Seven years ago, Clay Shirky, who is now NYU’s vice provost of educational technologies, wrote a provocative and prescient blog post, which argued that higher education’s biggest challenges… Read more →
BE OPEN: Zoom in Higher Education 11 October 2021 With the COVID-19 speeding up the shift of higher education online, it might seem that the golden era of online education has finally come. However, while some educators sing praise of Zoom lectures and are going to keep this tool in their teaching kit even when the crisis is… Read more →
BE OPEN: How the Pandemic Changed Higher Education 29 September 2021 The coronavirus pandemic brought unexpected and significant disruption to the many spheres of our lives. The last year and a half have seen empty campuses and a precipitant shift towards e-learning among other efforts of the higher educational sector to survive in these turbulent times. While some experts predict a… Read more →
BE OPEN: Why Design Education Is Important 12 September 2021 Criticizing design education has become a popular trend these days. It is often accused of being costly and irrelevant and its value and validity are called in question. Some of the accusations are not baseless. The whole design field is going through major transformations, and educational institutions appear not to… Read more →
BE OPEN: How Generation Z Students Are Changing Higher Education Pt2 27 August 2021 A study conducted in nine European countries shows that “Entrepreneurship education has a positive impact on the entrepreneurial mindset of young people, their intentions towards entrepreneurship, their employability and finally on their role in society and the economy.” That also implies that if higher education institutions offered more entrepreneurial-minded vocational… Read more →
BE OPEN: How Generation Z Students Are Changing Higher Education 11 August 2021 Last several years of higher education have seen a new generation of students enter their college-going years. This is the so-called Generation Z, also known as Centennials or Zoomers, those born sometime in the mid-1990s through to 2012, and like many generations before them, they have their unique characteristics and… Read more →
BE OPEN on Creative Art Degrees: Return on Investment 21 July 2021 If you’re creative and imaginative, a degree in art could be just what you’re looking for to express yourself. But the starving artist stereotype perpetuated across generations makes us think that career of an artist can hardly be a lucrative one, and to pursue creativity would mean accepting inevitability of… Read more →
BE OPEN: Online Degree – to Be or Not to Be 16 July 2021 Online degree courses have gained immense popularity recently. The COVID-19 outbreak experienced throughout the world brought the transformation in education back to the agenda by forcing distance learning. Although learning the right brush stroke or mastering a drawing technique online can be a little more challenging than learning how to… Read more →
BE OPEN on Design Thinking: Foundation of Success or Fraud? Pt 2 24 June 2021 Proponents of Design Thinking claim that institutes, like the Hasso Plattner at Stanford, can be places of real exploration and new forms of teaching and research. However, some educators and designers air an opinion that design thinking has warped into something superficial that has little to do with actual design.… Read more →
BE OPEN on Design Thinking: Foundation of Success or Fraud? 8 June 2021 For a last few years, Design Thinking has been a buzzword in the world of design. Since design itself is no longer just for physical objects, Design Thinking is being applied to abstract entities, such as systems and services, as well as to devise strategies, manage change and solve complex… Read more →
BE OPEN: Fusionist, the Corporate Designer of the Future 25 May 2021 As the boundaries of “design” in the 21st century grow to be less certain, there is going to be a considerable demand for strategic design managers delivering solutions to new or complex problems, driving growth and solving issues. According to Neal Stone, visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art… Read more →
BE OPEN: Design Jobs of the Future 15 May 2021 When facing a choice between numerous career opportunities and university courses, most prospective design students will have to reflect on how their future job might evolve by the time they enter the workplace. With technology, emerging global economies and fast-growth industries reshaping employment as we knew it, regional and world… Read more →
BE OPEN: Future of Design Education pt2 25 April 2021 According to Ketterman, who took the academy path himself, even if you try to participate in forums or start your own study group, these programs are mostly made up of adults switching careers who do not prioritize extra socializing with fellow students. The bootcamp approach most design academies employ does… Read more →- BE OPEN: Future of Design Education 15 April 2021 Traditional design education, as we know it, has remained consistent for centuries. Taking roots from an ages-old master-and-apprentice arrangement, it has seen a change in educational environments but not its essence: an experienced instructor challenges students with exercises that unveil the basics of the chosen discipline. Today, speaking of the… Read more →
BE OPEN: Education as a way to develop people’s natural talents and abilities 21 March 2021 Ken Robinson, an international consultant on education and professor emeritus at the University of Warwick, presents his take on the distinction between learning, education and school in his piece "Standardisation broke education. Here's how we can fix our schools" published by the Wired earlier this year. "The movement towards personalisation… Read more →
BE OPEN: Personalized learning – what is behind the trend? 12 March 2021 For decades, formal education has been focused on comparatively narrow forms of academic ability, which results in disregarding the diversity of human talents and interests. Modern educators see a solution in personalization, a teaching and learning process that addresses the strengths and needs of individual learners. Sir Ken Robinson, the… Read more →
BE OPEN: Degree or no degree? 22 February 2021 There’s been much talk lately about whether or not a practicing designer needs formal education. So is formal design education a must or a derelict? Are the existing formal design courses up-to-date and is it at all possible to keep pace with the rapidly developing trends? Are there any alternatives… Read more →
BE OPEN: Is there a gap between architecture education and career? 8 February 2021 Talks and disputes about the quality of modern architecture education have been going on for a couple of years already. A large section of the profession thinks that educators are failing at our sole task: to train students for practice. Patrik Schumacher, Zaha Hadid Architects principal and a guest professor… Read more →
