Gràffica magazine interviews Jorge Wimes, Academic Director at ESDESIGN
Gràffica magazine interviewed our Academic Director, Jorge Wimes, to discuss how to tackle the challenges of studying design during a pandemic. The online model has become a lifeline for continuing education in a continuous and safe manner. However, not everything goes in the digital ecosystem, so Jorge talks to us about how to integrate an online format into a design school and the challenges of future training.
At ESDESIGN, it has been five years since we discovered the possibilities offered by this format and decided to launch online training—not to adapt traditional education to this format, but to create it by conceiving the digital model as our primary setting.
Where does online education stand following the COVID-19 pandemic?
Online education has been strengthened by the situation we are experiencing, in the same way that working from home has become normalised. Furthermore, it has been proven that if there is good content, planning, and skilled professionals/lecturers who energise the classes, the student's learning and its quality are not affected.
What are the keys to offering quality training in this digital context?
The keys are having a lecturer capable of communicating and empathising with students, and creating dynamics that bring them closer to and engage them with the content, resulting in group participation.
There are several advantages to this: better use of time by avoiding commuting; being able to count on the best professionals regardless of the city they live in; sharing the transversality provided by multicultural contexts with classmates; and flexibility in acquiring content...
How has ESDESIGN evolved? At the school, you were born with a digital vocation; how did you know that this was the way forward?
We were born with a digital vocation five years ago. We realised there was an opportunity within online training in the field of creativity. Other areas of our daily lives already included technology to meet student needs, but this one did not. We dove headfirst into this model with the aim of being the benchmark and the first school for designers with exclusively online content. We started with 4 Master’s degrees and have expanded the offer to 17. Now we are working on new additions for 2021.
How is the lack of contact, the so-called "human factor", resolved in the digital sphere?
As I mentioned before, the change in mindset is instantaneous. Once you are caught up in the methodology and the daily pace of the classes, the medium stops mattering. Instead, students focus on how they acquire knowledge; how they interact with their peers and lecturers; and the advantages of this opportunity...
One aspect we are working on is how we achieve synergies or moments that add value. For example, the moments that occur in a physical school's cafeteria and complement the student experience. As an anecdote: in one of the last classes I taught, the students would meet 15 minutes beforehand with their cameras and mics on and share a coffee, each from their home or studio. Naturally, they had found that space for interaction.
When you are caught up in the interest it arouses in you, you are not thinking about the medium: you are thinking about the content you are acquiring.
How important is it for a school to have active professionals in its ranks?
For us, it is fundamental to have professional lecturers capable of sharing what is happening day-to-day in the classroom; having that capacity for reaction, staying ahead, and incorporating new content/experiences that we consider current and can quickly benefit the students. Similarly, it is important for us to work on projects that give back to society and can be implemented; hence "designing for real life" (one of our mottos).
In line with this idea of designing for real life, we must highlight two events held by ESDESIGN. The first is FES ESDESIGN, the school's own design festival; and the second is LAB ESDESIGN, our itinerant laboratory. These are actions we also carry out to facilitate that connection with students and the design community.
Will the future of training be digital, or will it not exist at all?
I am totally convinced that training in the digital field has a long way to go, and we are yet to discover its full potential. Let’s remember that, in the beginning, we started methodologically by transferring/adapting the knowledge we had from in-person to online. But the moment we began to think digitally in an integral way, the results and experiences became much more rewarding for everyone. Nor should we forget that advances in technology will allow us to explore new ways of consuming content in a more immersive way.