Chapter 5: On mass-education Domus Academy, Milan, 18th September 2014

1. Anne-Sophie Gauvin, Stefano Mirti
#Design the brave new world:
an owner’s manual
Chapter 5.
On mass-education
Domus Academy,
Milan, 18th September 2014

2. Last year we came and we presented:
“Brave New World, a user’s manual” book.
This year, we focus on one specific theme:
how we educate people in the Brave New World.
That is, people like you.

3. Since last time we met,
we made some projects related to education.
At first we did this MOOC (massive on-line open course) called “Design 101”

4. Then, this February,
we launched the “Relational Design” master.
A one-year master class,
in collaboration with Abadir Academy
of Design and Fine Arts in Catania.

5. Well, actually, we did a lot of teaching using this platform called “Whoami”.
After a lot of try and try over, it is now a format:
we use it quite often and we keep improving it day after day.

6. Let’s use “Design 101” as a starting point.
First, some data for you to understand.
A course of 101 days long.
101 video-postcards / 101 pdf-letters / 101 exercises
A modular machine, reiterating itself every day, for 101 days.

7. Here, the trailer...

8. Now, some data:
42.895 students enrolled
10.025 started the course
629 completed it
350 asked for the certificate
300 submitted works for the final show
100 came to berlin to the final show
7 came to our summer workshop
3 came to our office to do an internship
1 remained with us to work

10. If we think to our MOOC,
the big question should be addressed to the students who finished it.
Why did you finish?
How could you make it all the way to the end?
Don’t you feel a little bit strange?

11. If you think that the previous data was astonishing,
you ain’t seen nothing yet...

12. Let’s go through some
other interesting data.
How many people?
How many hours?
How much money
does it cost to produce a
course like design 101?

13. Three people producing conceptual content and entertaining the students
Three people producing visual content
Two people producing videoclips
One person editing sounds
Roughly speaking, we are talking about 6000 hours of work
If we pay these people 10 euro per hour, it makes an impressive 60.000 euro overall
iversity gave us 25.000 euro
Hence, to play this gig,
we lost 35.000 euro from our own pockets.

14. If we look at the students’ data,
our MOOC was a total failure.
If we look at our work (how many people were
involved, how much we worked, how much
money we lost), it’s even worse.
Why did we do such a thing?
Why we are happy?
Why are we doing it again this year?
Why are we adding a new course?

15. In the teaser for Design 101,
we said that our goal was to set up a community.
We never said we wanted to educate thousands people.
We never said we wanted to become rich.
We never said we wanted to set up a start up or silly things like that.
We were extremely clear with our intended goal.
And this we did.

16. Let’s talk about the Design 101 community.
Again, we give you some data (by now you understood we like data…):
2936 people in our Facebook group
6700 likes on our Facebook page
1429 followers on Twitter
1523 pictures with the #Design1o1 hashtag on Instagram

17. Altogether, we set up a community of some thousand people (from the close to the loose ones).
They like us, we like them, we like each other.
They are waiting for our next courses, they want to help us.
They want to get involved in what we do.
A community. Of some thousand people.
This is quite priceless, isn’t?

18. How did we
manage to set up
a community?

19. We started with a mindset.
We had fun and shared our process.
We spent lots of time/love/energy
communicating all kinds of Design 101-related things.
Conversations started offline,
some were continued online,
some started online and continued offline.
Most of the time,
fueling us up with energy,
sometimes positive, other times negative,
over all, making the community growing.

20. At some point during the course,
the students asked us if they could become the teachers for a day.
This is what happened on day 98.

22. Then, there was #blaueblumen,
the end of the year show, party, exhibition at designtransfer in Berlin.
About 100 students came from all around the world.

23. And two months later,
3 students came to Milan to help us in the office and learn some new tricks.
Together, they made a beautiful archive of Design 101
and worked hard on communicating our summer camp.

25. Architecture, Between the Sea and the Sky,
the online / offline summer camp we did this summer, on Google+ and in Siracusa

26. To summarize our week in Siracusa...

27. Another big project we’ve been working on
is the online/offline Master Relational Design.
The first edition started in February 2014.

28. The first edition started on Valentines’ day,
but we are now preparing a second edition for January 2015

29. In January, we will have two masters starting:
this second edition of Relational Design and a brand new one called Macchine Pensanti.

30. Macchine Pensanti
(or “Thinking Machines”)
is about architecture.
Over one year,
the students will build a house together.

31. For our master programs,
we work in modules. 12 modules over a year.
As a general we have,
10 modules of 21 days online and 3 days offline,
1 summer camp and 1 winter camp, offline.
When we meet “offline”,
it is always in a different place around Italy.
We travel a lot.

33. We talked about Design 101.
We gave you a general idea of our master courses...
They are in fact our biggest education-related projects for the moment.
The other ones (either past, present or upcoming...)
are collected on our Whoami website.

34. Every time,
every course, every master is an experiment.
Usually, we are very happy,
but we are also very tired...

35. What we’ve learnt so far (1):
We are absolute beginners

36. What we’ve learnt so far (2):
To teach very complex things is fairly easy.
To teach very simple things is actually quite difficult.

37. What we’ve learnt so far (3):
If using social media while teaching,
the class needs to be transformed into a community.

38. What we’ve learnt so far (4):
Teachers are game moderators.
They set a frame of work and press play.

39. What we’ve learnt so far (5):
The success of a course is given by the quality and quantity
of interactions between the students and teachers.

40. What we’ve learnt so far (6):
We need times for students and teachers to meet in person.

42. Some useful things for you to know (1):
we work on things we really like and we are passionate of

43. Some useful things for you to know (2):
we learn and teach through narratives

44. Some useful things for you to know (3):
we take the complete challenge,
including the financial side

45. Some useful things for you to know (4):
we learn while we do

46. Some useful things for you to know (5):
we learn from mistakes

47. Some useful things for you to know (6):
we go step by step

48. Some useful things for you to know (7):
we iterate improving upon time

49. Some useful things for you to know (8):
we work with the network

50. Some useful things for you to know (9):
we use existing tools

51. Some useful things for you to know (12):
things we do are fun

52. Another of those trailers we like a lot:

53. Thank you for listening!
Now, it’s time to play a game.
You will make a mask for yourself.
Then, you will make a selfie (wearing the mask),
and share your selfie online using this hashtag: #domusmask

54. Stefano Mirti
on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
Anne-Sophie Gauvin
on Facebook, Instagram