SHIFT{ed} Summer Summit: it’s a wrap! 

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us for SHIFT{ed}: all the participants at the live virtual sessions, everyone viewing the recordings on YouTube, and all of you who have joined the conversations on Slack. The panelists and attendees built on some really important conversations we started last year at SHIFT (and started some new ones), shared amazing resources and stories, and hopefully made some lasting connections with other design educators from around the globe. The positive responses to this year’s virtual summit have been overwhelming and humbling, and we are so grateful to everyone who has shared their experience with us. 
And while SHIFT{ed} itself might be in the past, the recordings of the sessions, along with materials in the Living Archives, and engagement with the community in the Slack will live on! You can check out all the recordings at our YouTube channel, and can still join our Slack. We will be publishing the Living Archives as soon as they are organized and ready to go.

Join us for again for SHIFT!

Last year the AIGA Design Educators Community organized the SHIFT Summer Summit to explore the ways educators were shifting within and amidst the chaos of 2020, pivoting and changing course even while the world was rapidly changing around us. The DEC wants to return to these themes exactly one year later to find out how we have SHIFT{ed}, if we are still SHIFT{ing}, and the ways we must continue to SHIFT. Now that we have all had the chance to gain some perspective, with new methods and tools in place to tackle our teaching, research, and community engagement, we can come together and learn from each other once more.

This week-long online event seeks to gather the design education community to take stock of where we are, what we have learned, and what we want to do next. The summit will focus on themes of Teaching, Research, and Community, and will feature multiple ways for participants to engage with each other and the content—including asynchronous panel presentations, synchronous virtual roundtables, online forums for discussion, and more. We will bring back all the things you loved about SHIFT, and plan to add some new and exciting activities and ways to engage as well.

Access the SHIFT{ed} Virtual Summit schedule here.

Volunteers Needed

We are seeking volunteers from the community to help us make SHIFT{ed} happen! Volunteer roles include:
– Moderators for SHIFT{ed} specific Slack channels to help facilitate and shape the conversation
– Moderators for the live sessions at SHIFT{ed} who will help monitor the chat and lend a hand as needed in Zoom
– Volunteers willing to help out with the back-end running of the summit, and with helping us to record and edit the live events

All volunteers will receive our undying gratitude and a formal letter of thanks that can be used for annual reviews and promotion materials. If you are interested or have questions, please email Liese Zahabi at liese.zahabi@unh.edu.

Call for Submissions: Design Program Virtual Tours

As part of the SHIFT{ed} Summer Summit programming, we are seeking short video recordings from YOU, sharing a brief overview of your design programs and classrooms! We want to see the spaces you teach in, the technology you use to teach, and hear about your curriculum, the focus/philosophy of your program, and most importantly, an overview of who your students are! We are interested in hearing from a diverse array of programs located all over the world and within different kinds of institutions.

These virtual program/studio tours will be stitched together in a video that will be part of the SHIFT{ed} Summer Summit programming, and will be available long-term on the DEC YouTube channel. We hope these design program overviews will give educators all over the world new ideas for organizing the spaces we teach in, frameworks for the curriculum we utilize, and approaches for engaging our unique groups of students. 

Videos should be between 3–10 minutes in length, and can be a mixture of live footage (cell phones and Zoom captured footage is totally fine) and/or still images with narration. We prefer .mp4 files, but can accommodate file transfer links or links to published videos.

To participate, please complete this Google Form: https://forms.gle/Z5ySU7PDDTsJkd2RA

Call for Submissions: Graduate Student Design Research Pecha Kuchas

As part of the SHIFT{ed} Summer Summit programming, we are seeking graduate students willing to present their current research as a Pecha Kucha presentation. (Not familiar with the Pecha Kucha format? You can find the basics here). These presentations will be part of a live session at the summit, and will give design educators the chance to hear about current design research and meet emerging design researchers and educators, and will give graduate students the chance to get feedback on their research and network with each other and established design educators. Come join the fun!

DEADLINE: July 23, 2021, by midnight (UTC -5)

You will be notified of acceptance by Monday July 26th.

If you are interested in participating, please submit your information to this Google Form: https://forms.gle/4TuExMhujxuPGgHP8

Questions?

Email Liese Zahabi at liese.zahabi@unh.edu.