It is no secret that university education has been dramatically affected by the situation of the COVID-19 epidemic. Kagawa University has taken the same measures as other universities in Japan, such as canceling the entrance ceremony, postponing the start of classes, and banning face-to-face lectures. The faculty members are responding with emergency teaching methods in place of regular classes. They are also focusing on providing more support to students than ever before, including understanding their living and learning environment and providing psychological support.

The state of emergency was lifted, and face-to-face classes have resumed in the seminar and practical training courses from June 18. However, online and on-demand remote lessons will continue for lectures. Students are forced to balance face-to-face and remote lessons throughout this academic year.

In the design education curriculum of the Product and Media Design course, there are many practical classes, which requires students to change their learning style in terms of where, when, and how they take the classes. In light of the current situation where not only corporate work styles are changing, but also industries and businesses are changing, we feel that design education itself needs to change.

Many of the faculty members in this course used to work in companies and are well versed in business and corporate trends. This means that we can re-examine the ideal way of university design education objectively and from various perspectives, and to create a new style of education. Therefore, we would like to ride on the situation brought about by COVID-19 as a starting point for envisioning the ideal state of design education and creating content and learning mechanisms that will be beneficial to students in the future.

Lesson after the resumption of face-to-face classes