Co-design as a Networked Approach to Designing Educational Futures

Abstract Design is a contested term, and this has implications for designing educational futures. Described through five senses to elucidate its complexity, design can be conceptualised as domain, as process, as plan, as the resulting product, and as the intentional creation of new possibilities. In this paper, we use the five design senses to illustrate how they could be useful for making sense of a large, complex, and multifaceted educational project. We define the design senses as a network of socio-material entanglements and illustrate how actor-network theory can be useful in unpacking this network. Taking a postdigital perspective, we illustrate that in designing for learning in higher education, the relationships between the five senses are fluid, constantly shifting, and emergent in a network of human and non-human actants. We argue that design research needs to move beyond cognitive approaches to the study of collaborative approaches that empower participants. In doing so, our study proposes a co-design approach to designing educational futures where multidisciplinary teams connect their knowledge, skills, and resources to carry out a design task. We present three mini-cases from our co-design project to illustrate how the five senses of design can be used to unpack and untangle the web of complex relationships in co-design. Furthermore, we reflect on the shifting role of educational developers as they lead and participate in co-design teams. We conclude by problematising educational design for designing educational futures in a postdigital world.