During 2020/1, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, education has had to adapt to a predominantly online learning environment as part of an emergency response strategy that replaced the conventional Face-to-Face (F2F) student interaction. Fuelled by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), we are now steadily moving towards a hybrid-learning environment. The overall notion has been that within the crisis there are also opportunities to evolve, adapt, and make new pathways. However, most local institutions currently rely on a blended method of lecture delivery, which is not as radical.

The study was based on a previous paper submitted and published in 2021 titled ‘The role of student-staff partnership and collaborative learning in interior design education’. The 2021 inquiry concluded with a proposal for pilot lectures that were revised and implemented during the academic year 2022 in the Interior Design (ID) Department of a private design college in Johannesburg, South Africa. The 2021 study focused on finding strategies that stimulate student engagement and participation in the theory subject of Critical Studies (CS) within a predominantly online learning environment.

The Second Phase (2022) focus was on testing the above-identified strategies as well as the Project Planners developed for ID1 & 2 towards the end of 2021. Those included shorter lectures; group work and peer review; interactive tutorial sessions and class discussions; setting weekly deadlines; and the use of a variety of media files. A valuable contribution to this paper remains the study and online publication, Responding to the necessity for change: higher education voices from the south during the COVID-19 crisis (SU 2021). According to Stellenbosch University (SU 2021), humanising education whilst encouraging ethics of care and digital well-being is paramount to the transition to hybrid education.

Throughout the academic year 2022, revised pilot lectures were implemented along with class observations, anonymous student surveys, and separate focus groups with ID1 & 2 students. Interviews with colleagues were conducted in 2023. The main conclusions include the need for compulsory F2F lectures as well as synchronous or asynchronous online sessions; the use of a digital collaboration platform during class discussions; data light methods and various media; setting weekly deadlines; collaborative and independent learning; site visits; guest lecturers; learning from making mistakes; empathy and understanding; accessibility and language support.