It’s difficult to consider a design thinking workshop when you are in a crisis mode like trying to prepare for a pandemic, which is where we all find ourselves at the moment. If the direction from the top seems confusing, due to misinformation, conflicting information, over reaction, impossible asks or bad advice, how can we come together to chart a path, when experts say to stay home and self-quarantine for 14 days?
In academia, it’s complicated further when the end users—the students—are forced into distance learning solutions led by faculty who are not as tech savvy as they now need to be. The professor, relying on his personal story behind the image in his PowerPoint presentation to entertain his listeners, now has to video chat on a different and much smaller platform. Good thing I have a drama degree. Even those teaching technical courses have to discover new ways to reach out to struggling students needing one-on-one attention, due to a language barrier, or not being able to grasp the concept as easily as others.
I’m an Associate Professor of Interior Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), teaching a 3rd year studio design class and a 2nd year design technology class. I also teach design thinking in the business school. Distance learning for me until this point was learning how to raise my daughter when my family lives in France.
The mask now comes off on the FIT administration scrambling to propose a seamless education under stressful circumstances. It becomes counter-productive and unsafe to hold a workshop with administration, faculty and students on the best approaches to finishing out the semester in a safe and stimulating environment, when given the home may be safe, but not prepared for learning or discovering. Now the faculty is being asked to come up with solutions on their own. We must train within days on new software, hoping our devices can support the latest technology. When you’re dealing with your own family situation—I grew up in New Rochelle and my 92 years old mother living not far away has a respiratory condition—who has time to learn new software? We are inundated with information and recommendations from colleagues that make it sound so simple: some of us rising to the task, others struggling to remain relevant as we watch video tutorials and reviews. God forbid your students discover, or shall I say, you discover what the students already know, that you don’t know how to use technology. A pandemic now becomes a humbling moment for resistant educators and administrators to get with the software program.
Meanwhile, the computer in my FIT office is not set up for video conferencing. So, even if I wanted to download the latest programs, I have to do it on my laptop. However, SUNY does not require its students to have laptops. They provide hundreds of computer stations across the campus. But if the college is closed and the students have to work from home, what if they don’t have a laptop? If they do, what if can’t support design industry software? This is the case for several students in my design technology class. Either that or the PC vs. Mac argument rears its ugly head: the PC based CADD software is not very compatible on the Mac and several of my students are Mac users. It gets so complicated, as you think you’ve made the right decision.
Last year we were in family crisis mode when my wife suddenly had a blood clot burst in her head causing her to have a stroke and partial paralysis. I took the semester off instead of trying to teach online from France. I still had to return to New York City each month to run my architectural and interior design firm. The decisions I had to make were complicated by French family intervention, which felt like I was being left out of the process, since I was an American living in the USA. It was near impossible to bring us all together to come up with a solution for caring for my wife and daughter, when all they wanted to do was take over.
At the beginning of last week, as I was planning to go to France to visit my family for the upcoming weekend, I “turned myself in” to HR and asked what would happen if I went. They rightly informed me that I would have to self-quarantine for two weeks, effectively cancelling class. I decided while on the phone to cancel my trip. Norwegian Air was unhelpful in changing my ticket to a later date, whenever that is, and was requiring me to pay a fee. I received an email from a student, cc’d to the administration, that I had already gone to France. She demanded that I cancel class for two weeks. Panic has set in. Why was I in school risking infecting the students, faculty and administration? I was shocked. I already cancelled my trip, and anyway, it wasn’t scheduled until the upcoming weekend. Luckily, I did cancel. Our President banned all travel from Europe except, at the time, the UK.
As we navigate through these unchartered waters, distilling fact from fiction and making decisions that have unintended consequences, I will be blogging on how this period in my life has changed me forever, just like it did last year, as my wife began a long journey of recovery from her brain injury. This week the college is closed as we begin training sessions to teach online classes. I’ve heard already it’s chaotic at other NYC based design schools. SUNY also does not take into consideration that design schools are different, as they get a handle on the situation.
I’ll keep you posted and you try to stay the required six feet away from everybody.
