This paper describes a learning experience leaded within the HI-TEC project (Hypermedia and Innovation for Technology Enhanced Communication). HI-TEC is an orienting course for High School students that want to enrol at the Politecnico di Milano. This project proposes a blended course: three weeks on an eLearning platform and one week-workshop at the Politecnico di Milano.
This experience, started few years ago with the Schools of Engineering, in the last two years has involved also the School of Design. The difficulties of applying a traditional eLearning platform to a “not codified” discipline, as Design is, have been made milder by the blended approach
The traditional design teaching method is characterized by the central role of experience and also by the importance of cooperation activities supported by a constructive approach to learning. In particular, they emphasise respectively the value of the design process and the relevance of the cognitive process: two elements that in Industrial Design learning go hand in hand.
Having identified important differences between the traditional eLearning teaching methods of the HI-TEC platform and the teaching model of the School of Design, the overlapping areas of the two environments were studied to identify a common base for feasible design paths.
The combined approach -the use of asynchronous and synchronous learning, distance and presence, single and group learning and the activity of supporting the creation of an online learning community- was a chance to discuss the design learning approach, fitting it to the technological bonds proper of eLearning.
Following the examples of some Virtual studios, the learning approach was based on four key elements:
-review activity - translation of the review activities from an oral form into a written form.
-historical path - unlike conventional workshops, they offer the opportunity to store information concerning the design process.
-equal relationship - the possibility to communicate with the student only looking at his/her product and not at his/her face has been identified by many, both students and lecturers, as a positive point and an improvement compared to traditional teaching.
-flexible time - thanks to the use of asynchronous activities, design reviews can be spread out in time and space. This fluency is useful both for the management of the relations between the actors and for the teaching system which is strengthened by the fact that tutors have the possibility of seeing again and again the images and schemes related to a project.
During the online step students experimented a self-learning approach by developing an autonomous research on different, but similar, subjects. This research was constantly monitored by the teaching group that underlined common problems and promoted the discussion between members of the learning community.
During the workshop, on the opposite, students were asked to work in groups, putting together the previously gathered information, in order to solve a specific design problem.
This crossed learning approach results very useful: design learning, characterized by an inductive approach, is a meta-learning that implies a know-how development in which the collaborative dimension cover an important role. The blended approach also emphasises the human dimension allowing teachers, staff, tutors and students to deal with the others inside the learning community and to change gradually their design culture.