I had the privilege to attend the final presentation of MediaLAB Amsterdam students recently.

The message from students and staff is clear: there is immense value in cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural team-based learning. Cross-ed rules!

It is inspiring and gratifying to see cross-ed being done as a matter of course, not as some special one-off experimental project.

When I was doing my design degree too many years ago now, trying to get any cross-disciplinary projects happening was a massive uphill battle; let alone projects involving real industry clients, students from different year groups and disciplines, and in different countries!

Some advantages of cross-ed lessons straight from the exhibition floor:

medialab-process-programme

The MediaLAB is actively doing research and development in design process, and have a considered, well-articulated, and SCRUM-able process they actively work with.

Thank you Marco van Hout for showing me around.