Investigating the Effect of Socio-Environmental Changes on Culture of Education, with Cultural Design and Positive Education Approaches

This paper is concerned with the investigation of the effect of changes on the culture of education based on the cultural design contents and tools. The aim of this study is to deliberate the possibility of transferring the educational material intactly by professors, teachers and instructors virtually and also performing appropriate practical exercises by students in a team for learning those materials in virtual learning environment specially for practical fields such as Design. For this aim first an extensive literature review was conducted regarding education, positive education, positive psychology, online education, culture of education and dynamism or durability of culture.
Nowadays education is mostly focused on transferring knowledge and neglects nurturing the other aspects such as physical, emotional, spiritual and psychological skills and also developing character strengths which leads to flourish and wellbeing. Obviously neglecting these aspects has negative influence on the society. Positive psychology was formed to solve the inefficiencies by focusing on character strengths. Based on positive psychology, positive education was established to reduce the neglection of those aspects.
In order to apply positive education, few workshops entitled “Design in Culture, Culture in Design” were performed, in which methods and tools for cultural design have been taught based on positive education. These workshops were instructing culture sensitive design and at the same time were aiming to influence the culture of designers to enhance their views towards happiness and wellbeing.
One of the important factors in designing educational program is culture. Culture is dynamic and obliged to change. Design is also dynamic and considers the changes. Different situations need different strategies. Therefore, in this recent pandemic Covid-19 which caused mutation in all aspects of life, so many design considerations were needed. One of these aspects was education that required adaptation with the new situation. Although the infrastructure and technology of online education existed, wasn’t yet inclusive and culturally accepted.
Due to the experience of the previous workshops and the new situation caused by coronavirus, an online workshop was designed and performed. “Giving Meaning to Quarantine” was chosen as the theme of the workshop. Even though these workshops were hands-on and required teamwork, it was assumed that it could be performed online and all that practical teamwork could take place from far distance. For this aim there was a need to consider the limitations, challenges and opportunities of the new situation. For example, the medium which has provided the opportunity of online communications, could be itself a barrier for a proper interaction.
Due to the particular situation of quarantine and lockdown which kept people in their houses and caused anxiety and boredom, “home” was chosen as the context of the project.
The results showed that in spite of physical distance, the team could cooperate interactively without difficulty. They used social media context to gather information for their field study. Division of tasks took place and their project outcome which was consist of 3D model, prototype and animation was successfully presented. Therefore, it was concluded that online education could be practical.