Page 36 - EHDD ONEder Grant Report

REMAINING QUESTIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES AHEAD
“The beginning is always
today.”
- Mary Shelley
The future of education is full of complexity.
The more we learned through this process,
the more we realized there was to learn.
However, the sense of hope and shared
purpose has been palpable. The future
of higher education is about bringing
together passionate people from a range of
disciplines to think creatively, grapple with
real constraints and challenges, and craft a
plan for implementing positive change.
This work should provoke discussion. There
is so much more to learn and explore. We
barely scraped the surface of issues around
equity, resilience, innovation, health and
wellness, technology, and the physical
environment’s role in making change. There
are many more discussions, studies, and
explorations ahead.
+ REIMA GINING THE F U T URE OF HIGHER EDUC A TION | MAR CH 2 02 1
As architects and designers, we instinctively
think of the built environment to approach
or solve significant issues. Of course,
reimagining learning environments, built
and unbuilt, is just one piece of a much
larger ecosystem of interdisciplinary work,
development, and research that will be
needed to build towards positive change in
higher education.
The following 5-10 years will be an incredible
opportunity to test, prototype, and explore
new approaches. Faculty and students
must be given agency to participate in
and shape that change. As designers, we
have an opportunity to leverage design as
a powerful tool to facilitate a process that
allows impactful ideas to emerge.
The Pandemic has inspired a shared sense
of hope and purpose for the future of
education. We have shown that we can be
incredibly adaptive and resilient when we
have to be. Now is the time to leverage that
resilience, informed from a time of dramatic
change, to inspire positive change for the
future.
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