| Abstract | #MDXPD WELCOME
“...bringing people and technology together (in meaningful ways) to create useful stuff and things.”
Welcome, everyone, to our 7th Annual #MDXPD Magazine. Our 2020-21 academic year was dominated by the ongoing COVID pandemic. It has been a time of sadness and of difficulty, but also of innovation and inspiration. The creativity, compassion and resilience of our students and staff through this period shines through in the stories we feature in this issue of the magazine.
We have continued to be lucky, in this period of fear, uncertainty and upheaval, to work and learn within an enlightened institution. The institutional ethos was captured by their statement of principles for staff and students at the beginning of the COVID crisis (see pages 03-04 of #MDXPD 2020 Magazine). This supportive framework continues to enable us to approach design and engineering within our philosophy that leads with insight, understanding and empathy, and values collaborative creativity and human and ecology centred innovation.
Everything continued to change. And our students and staff confronted the changes with energy, dignity and support for one another.
The staff and student co-design of the Product Design and Product Design Engineering structure, content and approach, highlighted in last year’s magazine remained a huge positive in developing our teaching and learning in the online space, through to hybrid live/online approaches and back towards fully live, digitally supplemented experiences for the approaching academic year.
The focus on collaborative practice, studio ‘environments’ and team teaching, rather than traditional lecture-based approaches that was recreated in our 2020-21 ‘virtual studio’ practice, ensured that the hands-on and peer-supported experience was retained and refined in a positive and meaningful way. There were challenges during this period and in the coming return to live activity, but the creative and collaborative mindset of all staff and students surmounted the challenges, and we are optimistic that the new challenges will be equally well resolved.
This year’s magazine contains our usual mix of inspirational final year major projects, staff and student stories and projects from across the year, alongside three special features: reflections on Teaching & Learning throughout COVID (see pages 3-16); ‘5 Years On’ reviews and reflections from our 2016 graduates on life in industry & at MDXPD (see pages 29-54); and a comprehensive collection of insights and advices from industry on Design Portfolios (see pages 75-105).
Good luck to all our brilliant graduates for the future. Welcome to all our new students. Take care of yourselves & best wishes to all readers of the magazine. |
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