Journal of Design, Business & Society - Design and Interdisciplinarity, Mar 2023

This project reviewed the application of an innovative pedagogical approach, the virtual flipped classroom (VFC), in postgraduate design education. The VFC is an integration of the flipped classroom (FC) and virtual canvas. It enables teachers to proactively engage students in design thinking processes and activities to achieve active learning and better learning outcomes. To investigate the effect of VFC, the core research team implemented it to postgraduate programmes across three Australian universities, including a Master of Design Strategies course in the School of Design and the Built Environment at the Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra (UC), a Master of Design course in the School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University (ECU) and a Master of Design course in the Creative Unit, University of South Australia (UniSA). The core research team observed and reflected on students’ learning achievements and motivation during their design thinking process across three Australian universities in two states (South Australia and West Australia) and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), between 2020 and 2022. This study also explored postgraduate design students’ perceptions towards the idea of studying design online via the Interface Student Experience Questionnaire (ISEQ) and student evaluation questionnaire. It helped to identify and verify whether VFC could provide a transitional middle ground to a fully online design course. This study provides insights into student and staff reservations about online delivery and identifies the barriers and opportunities to study design within an entirely virtual environment.

This article examines the deliberations and actions of a group of communication design educators in replacing discretionary grading in eight core units of a design course with a combination of pass/fail grading, rich formative feedback and a reinvigorated studio environment. The changes sought to better focus students on their creative process and improve their awareness of their acquisition of attributes, skills and knowledge along the path to becoming work-ready graduates. The traditional studio model of graphic design education approaches student learning through immersion in practice, imagining novice designers absorbing abilities and dispositions through experimentation and proximity to discipline experts and peers. If this model ever truly operated in Australia’s design schools, it has been eviscerated by the massification, marketization and rationalization of tertiary education since the early 1990s. Australian design education now operates with significantly reduced contact hours, tightly scheduled classes and standardized administrative, classroom and assessment practices that do not effectively model professional practice and limit students’ development of creative confidence. Another barrier to fostering students’ design acumen is their frequent fixation on grades as markers of success. We looked to removing grades to revitalize students’ flagging creative ambitions within the constraints of a tertiary education system we could not change. In stressing that a move to pass/fail grading is not an action to be taken lightly, we discuss our research into its advantages and disadvantages, the integral reconceptualization of learning and teaching approaches required to make the change and the challenges in implementation. This included understanding how students and staff interacted in the studio, their emotional and philosophical attachment to graded assessment, the effort required to communicate the changes to staff and students and developing resources to combat the fragmentation of the educational experience, which risks stripping change of its meaning and purpose.

This study presents and reflects on the experiences of three design studios in various undergraduate programmes in China, Turkey and Colombia during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study identifies adaptive and transformative strategies and acts implemented in these scenarios to respond to rapidly changing circumstances. Consequently, this study is aimed at educators and administrators in design programmes, design researchers and the wider design and higher education (HE) communities. A descriptive multi-case study design was applied to describe several instances of a contemporary phenomenon within its natural environment. In these case studies, the authors present and reflect on their teaching experiences before, during and after the pandemic. The authors identify the following adaptive and transformative strategies and acts that contributed to creating resilient, sustainable and inclusive learning environments during the pandemic: (1) redesigning the curriculum as an emergent phenomenon; (2) adapting the project brief and adjusting learning expectations; (3) expanding the instructor’s role in the studio; (4) renegotiating the boundaries between students and instructors; (5) increasing awareness about students’ mental health and well-being; (6) adopting new tools, materials and techniques, and adapting the existing ones; (7) implementing new methods for communicating with the students. This article contributes to the existing discussions about the future of design education. The findings can help plan future design curricula that are adaptable, flexible and responsive to change. Such curricula can better address different student needs, whose educational experiences can have longer-lasting effects through their contributions to society upon graduation. In this cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural study, authors use resilience, sustainability and inclusivity as lenses to analyse their respective contexts. Even though these categories have been used independently or in combination to approach educational phenomena in the past, this is the first study that applies them in the context of design studio education.

Studio coursework that focuses on real-world problems and stakeholder collaboration is an integral component of interdisciplinary design education. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased interest in flexible models of content delivery, we conceptualize the studio course as central to interdisciplinary undergraduate education. Leveraging the pandemic as an opportunity, we argue that changes to studio coursework have created new modalities for design education. By focusing on adaptive, iterative studio coursework during each year of the undergraduate degree, we allow for hybridization of undergraduate design coursework. We present an example of the studio-centred model in action at a large polytechnic university in the United States. Our results may be beneficial to educators and practitioners interested in anchoring undergraduate curricula within interdisciplinary studio work, and for ensuring that interdisciplinary studios are able to respond to the twenty-first-century life skills essential for producing competitive graduates on the global market. We present studio-centred coursework as a model for hybridizing design education. We emphasize collaboration and discovery as key skills to develop in undergraduates. We develop this model through: (1) collaborating with industry partners to determine problem spaces and mentor students; (2) building interdisciplinary teams of students and faculty and (3) hybridizing lecture-based disciplinary coursework. We anchor our results with three years of programme assessment data. By integrating faculty, students and industry partners within the studio-centred model, this study demonstrates how hybridized design-led education can equip students for interdisciplinary collaboration as they progress towards their career goals. Furthermore, we provide discussion on how these competencies are evaluated by stakeholders as desirable skills. Students’ overall positive responses to the studio-centred coursework are captured in our quantitative data. Stakeholder responses come via focus groups held once per semester. Using studio coursework to centre design curricula allows for increased hybridization of the curriculum, as students use studio courses and capstones to apply knowledge, develop projects and attain professional mentorship. Emphasis on societal impact guides students to emphasize the broader impacts of their designs. Using quantitative and qualitative data, we provide a model that integrates research and education in undergrad curricula using a studio-centred model.

As design has taken a social turn toward the co-designing of complex situations, design students are increasingly adopting multiple identities including that of a thinker, facilitator, activist and observer through engagement and collaboration with others. This expansion of identity from being solely a creative maker has presented a challenge for design students, which has been exacerbated by the external shock of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we introduce small learning interventions that can be flexibly incorporated into the current design curriculum to promote identity discovery and self-awareness among students. Through four case studies, these interventions are organized at three levels of scale in understanding identity: learning from self, learning from each other and learning from self with others. By providing students with opportunities for reflection and introspection, we aim to help them develop their social mindset and identity as designers, as well as prepare for more comprehensive curricular changes in the future to catalyse the shift towards the social turn of design.

The ability to think beyond disciplinary and geographical boundaries is essential for future designers to approach complex challenges and make a meaningful impact. Traditionally, these skills are developed in a studio environment where students can participate in mobility programmes and connect with peers from other disciplines; however, the COVID-19 pandemic has limited these opportunities due to social distance requirements. This article presents a framework for collaborative online international learning (COIL) for studio-based courses as an alternative for educators who want to foster interdisciplinary and intercultural learning in online and hybrid environments. The framework emerged from the development and delivery of a COIL initiative for an experience design studio course offered at an Australian University, in partnership with consumer behaviour and intercultural communication courses at a Brazilian University. The collaboration involved peer-to-peer online interactions between 43 undergraduate students enrolled in the three courses. Despite the renewed popularity of implementing COIL in higher education to overcome pandemic barriers, there is little documentation of applying the method in design disciplines and less evidence on how it corresponds to studio pedagogy. This type of computer-mediated collaboration offers an accessible and more inclusive alternative to mobility programmes and can continue to expand the opportunities for students to experience the world during and after the pandemic. The article focuses on the perspective of design education, reflecting on the benefits and challenges of online international collaboration, and provides new insights into the adaptations required to integrate the COIL and studio models.