Design, education, and the online tech-pandemic

Abstract

Amidst the COVID-19, the use of technology in the learning environment was no longer a matter of choice. Forced by circumstance, educators had to adapt in order to see the academic year through. While for some, already used to an online modality, it was business as always, for others was the start of a journey through unfamiliar territory. This study inserts itself in such context. It presents and discusses results gathered through an online questionnaire about the perceptions and personal experiences of design educators in Higher Education (HE) caught in this move from in-class face-to-face onto online teaching. Objectively, it portrays how this shift impacted their ability to teach, the compromises made or alternatives sought, and views towards a more technologically enabled future in HE. From a more extensive reliance on Learning Management Systems (LMS), changes in the learning environment, and perspectives of near-future uses of Virtual Reality (VR) in distance education, this study covers uses of technology but also the identification of pain points influencing the overall experience, as well as positive perceptions and significant changes made to the learning environment.