The Online Pandemic in Design Courses: Design Higher Education in Digital Isolation

Abstract

esign education is at the crossroads of re-defining itself in the midst of the COVID pandemic. Design educators are now part of a global movement to work in isolation through web-based communication and collaboration tools, which are also at the heart of a decentralised workforce encountered in the design profession. With its social isolation requirements, many universities have closed down their physical classes and lecture halls and have required educators to abruptly transition their courses to an online delivery. Although this transition is not universally endorsed, it has forced the hand of design educators who have been reluctant to jump into the online world with both feet. As the literature reveals, many blended learning solutions have been trialled but few design educators have made online teaching and learning an ongoing building block of their design courses. This chapter examines the outcomes of this foundational shift from face-to-face design studio teaching to online by surveying design students and educators at an Australian university. The results are surprisingly optimistic but there are challenges that need to be addressed by institutions to make this transition work in the post-pandemic world. The central research question is: Will design educators who are now working in an online environment go back to the physical classroom and lecture halls once the pandemic restrictions ease? Or is online design education now a central part of the design curriculum?

Re-considering the Architectural Design Studio after Pandemic: Tools, Problems, Potentials

“…Design studios are active spaces where students take social and intellectual actions such as drawing, communication, modelling (Saghafi, Franz, & Crowther, 2012). Also, design education is a very interactive process (Fleischmann, 2020b). Studios are social learning areas where students interact between themselves and with the instructors.…”

“…This process in which student production is discussed is a cycle of continuous impact and response. This interaction is an important feature that separates architecture studios from other disciplines' educational approaches (Fleischmann, 2020b).…”

Generation gap, learning from the experience of compulsory remote architectural design studio

“…McLuckie and Topping (2004) argued that the mere act of providing a platform is not sufficient; the pedagogical principles of peer learning must be facilitated and explored when conducting remote education. Iranmanesh and Onur (2021) showed that during the COVID-19 period, the decline in peer learning was the most significant upset of VDS (also see Fleischmann, 2020). Cabral, Freeman, Sachs, Schmidt, and Gamez (2020) called the practice of maintaining and reforming the concept of community in the sudden transition to VDS one of the most important learning opportunities for emerging pedagogical approaches.…”

Metode Belajar Daring Dengan Motivasi Belajar Mahasiswa Tingkat I Stikes St. Elisabeth Medan

“…Penelitian Katja (2020) mengatakan bahwa kurangnya motivasi (23 mahasiswa dari 52) menjadi top problem list mahasiswa di Arab selama belajar daring. Hal ini disebabkan oleh adanya gangguan di rumah seperti pekerjaan rumah yang membuat mahasiswa malas menghadiri kelas online (Fleischmann, 2020), sama halnya dengan penelitian Cahyani, dkk (2020) mengatakan bahwa semangat belajar mahasiswa menurun sebanyak 52.6% selama pembelajaran daring dikarenakan adanya perbedaan kondisi belajar di rumah dan di ruangan kelas. Sebanyak 61.1% mahasiswa sulit untuk menemukan waktu yang tepat untuk belajar mandiri di rumah dan lingkungan keluarga yang kurang kondusif menyebabkan mahasiswa tidak fokus belajar.…”