From students, for students: Exploring the online collaborative design education method

Abstract

With the increase in internet technology and the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, more and more online courses have gained popularity in recent years, and they are becoming an important component of higher education. Researches on online collaborative processes include team communication, sketching activities, and collaborator performance. Most previous researches have focused on revealing learning phenomena, while scientific solutions or logical explanations have often been neglected. This study designed a cross-cultural collaboration design course with SDGs as the theme and conducted an online teaching experiment. A total of 64 students from different fields participated. Then we invited 6 group leaders as representatives to conduct face-to-face personal interviews. By retracing the whole course process, we investigated the students' attitudes and opinions about the online co-design course and their preferences. The results show that students' attitudes toward online co-design tend to be positive. They believe that online collaborative courses help improve design efficiency. Especially after initial software training, most students found the online collaboration platform easy to use. However, they are also concerned about the current technology gaps, especially the inability to monitor students' real status, and the tendency of students to be inattentive or even absent, making collaboration difficult. In addition, the problem of network latency when collaborating with multiple people needs to be addressed. The results of this study can provide insights for future online design education practices, help improve the quality of design education and provide practical assistance to a wider range of practitioners in the design education industry.