Motion Design Teaching Strategy: Between Theory, Practice, Technology, and Distance Learning

Motion design has been an emerging design field since the 1960s, and, in the last two decades, academia has realized the importance to incorporate motion-based coursework in university curricula, responding to cultural and technological habits of a dynamic society. Research and didactic approaches have been proposed aiming at outlining the multidisciplinary, multimedia, and multimodality of the discipline and at teaching motion design’s inherent co-presence of theoretical assumptions, practical outcomes, and digital tools. Starting by defining motion design’s didactic approaches (both theoretical and practical-based) and providing a quick overview on academic courses, pursuing the hybridization between theory, practice, and technology, this article illustrates a teaching experience conducted by the authors, describes theoretical contents, practical workshops, assigned project works, and pedagogic methods, and briefly depicts how the multidisciplinary and hybridized strategy satisfies the recent needs of the online distance pedagogy.