Before, not yet after: reflections on the future of design education in an Australian context

In late 2019, a panel of design educators came together at the ACUADS conference to launch the Communication Design Educators Network and discuss what we saw then as big questions: Is tradition serving or stunting us? And, are the most valuable skills future design practitioners need today being taught? Then months later, the global pandemic brought immediate and ongoing impacts, masking what were also significant changes to higher education in Australia through the federal government's Jobs Ready Graduates package. Faced with an urgent need to reinterpret how they teach in order to keep students engaged via online studios and forums, locally and internationally, meant design educators had to reorient their priorities because it was not possible to carry on with the status quo. So, we reached out again to ask the same questions, and see what has changed, or not.