DOUBLE BLENDED LEARNING FOR MASTER DESIGN STUDENTS & DESIGN PRACTITIONERS
Year: 2019
Editor: Bohemia, Erik; Kovacevic, Ahmed; Buck, Lyndon; Brisco, Ross; Evans, Dorothy; Grierson, Hilary; Ion, William; Whitfield, Robert Ian
Author: van Boeijen, Annemiek
Series: E&PDE
Institution: Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, The
Section: Cultural 2
DOI number: https://doi.org/10.35199/epde2019.37
ISBN: 978-1-912254-05-7
Abstract
e culture and apply the results to their work.
We assumed that the course would give working professionals the opportunity to learn and benefit from these master students' work; their reflections on design, their application of the theory provided, and their use of a range of methods. Furthermore, they could save time in their practices as we offered them also the opportunity of pitching a design challenge that our master students could choose to work with during the course. In addition, we assumed that their fresh view on 'what design can do' in their own assignments would help them to discover new possibilities for new product and service design. Our course team provided feedback and answered questions through the online discussion forum.
For our students, we assumed that the combination of online and offline would motivate them to follow the course and stay on track. The regular activities, such as weekly lectures, templates, and discussions on the online forum supposed to help them to clearly guide them and motivate them, discouraging postponements. Furthermore, we expected that the contact with professionals would broaden their scope and support them building on their network.
For design educators, we expected this format could be an efficient and effective way to teach. The video lectures – partly given by invited speakers – motivate the educator to prepare and record with a quality that allows for reuse. Hence, the investment made for the development of the course material could be justified. In the former offline course guest speakers were invited for their expertise to talk life or via online videos. Every year these guest lecturers were invited or new lecturers needed to be found, which is often time consuming, and do not always justify the effort needed to prepare and lecture for a small number of students. Therefore, we thought that a blended solution would be a great motivation for educators to improve their work.
The results are based on two runs of the course (2017/2018 and 2018/2019), including feedback from the participants via pre- and post-questionnaires, semi-structured interviews with participants, and group discussions, from the course developers (three student assistants, one ICT course assistant, and one faculty online course coordinator), and from an interview with the initiator and instructor of the course (author).
Keywords: online learning, culture sensitive design, blended learning