Affiliation:
1. Department of Architectural and Industrial Design, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
This chapter presents reflections on teaching an introductory design studio to first-year industrial design and architecture students. The unit was taught online in 2020 and face-to-face in 2021. To improve online delivery, student feedback was gathered and analyzed thematically. Along with personal teaching reflections, the feedback was used to identify challenges and facilitating factors in online delivery. Findings showed that students appreciated having live support from the lecturer throughout the online class, rather than relying on recorded lectures, and benefitted from seeing each other's finished work. However, students expressed dissatisfaction with the limited options for developing the course's required prototypes. The experience suggests that design studios can be partially offered online successfully. However, students must have access to design workshops for specific weeks. This chapter documents the challenges of adapting a design subject for online delivery, with recommendations for academics who intend to develop engaging online design courses.