Overcoming the Challenges of Global Collaboration Through Design Education (original) (raw)
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J. of Design Research, 2008
Changes in industry require new forms of design education that better prepare students for the realities of concurrent engineering, increased involvement of suppliers in agile manufacturing, and the digitisation and virtualisation of collaboration. This article outlines these challenges for virtual design collaboration and reports first experiences of a distributed design studio (DDS) established between three European universities. In the DDS, students were taught core skills for virtual collaboration and could practice designerclient interaction in an experiential learning environment. The results of a course evaluation (during, at the end and one year after) show that students positively evaluated their own skill development. Student and staff feedback indicated that the embodiment phase proved to be more challenging and the evidence showed it coincided with reduced communication. Overall, the studio format can be seen as a suitable and realistic environment for practicing the relevant skills for virtual teamwork and designer-client communication. As a teaching initiative across institutions, it also served as personal development for staff.
A framework for design engineering education in a global context
Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing, 2010
This paper presents a framework for teaching design engineering in a global context using innovative technologies to enable distributed teams to work together effectively across international and cultural boundaries. The Digital Libraries for Global Distributed Innovative Design, Education, and Teamwork (DIDET) Framework represents the findings of a 5-year project conducted by the University of Strathclyde, Stanford University, and Olin College that enhanced student learning opportunities by enabling them to partake in global, team-based design engineering projects, directly experiencing different cultural contexts and accessing a variety of digital information sources via a range of innovative technology. The use of innovative technology enabled the formalization of design knowledge within international student teams as did the methods that were developed for students to store, share, and reuse information. Coaching methods were used by teaching staff to support distributed teams a...
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Design Collaboration in a Distributed Environment
Proceedings. Frontiers in Education. 36th Annual Conference, 2006
In engineering design classes, much of the learning takes place during student team meetings; so much of the learning is hidden from the instructor. Our long-term goal is to capture team interactions in order to develop a better understanding of collaborative learning in engineering design. This paper reports on a pilot study designed to understand the effects of electronic collaboration tools on the design process of student design teams. In the study, all teams were given the same design problem to solve, but some used pencil and paper, some used a regular whiteboard, and some used a shared digital whiteboard. While our study was a pilot study, it hints that the results of the design process are essentially the same whether students are co-located or distributed. However, we observed that students verbalized their arguments more when separated. The students in the distributed setting spent longer in each design step because they spent more time explaining ideas to students in the other room.
The present article examines how practices of computer-supported collaborative designing may be implemented in an elementary classroom. We present a case study in which 12-year-old students engaged in architectural design under the guidance of their teacher and a professional designer. The students were engaged in all aspects of design process, such as analysing the design of existing houses, analysing the building site, determining building volume, design facades, and floor plans; they formed seven teams, each of which had its own house to design. The data-analysis relied on the Knowledge Forum database, consisting students’ notes, pictures, sketches, and photos. The participants’ quantitative contributions to the database were analyzed with Analytic ToolKit which underlies Knowledge Forum. A qualitative content analysis was performed to the KF notes produced by the student teams; a theory and data-driven approach for categorizing the content of the notes was employed. The results revealed that the student teams considered various design constraints and familiarized themselves with their own building site and regulations regarding their permitted building volume. They constructed environmental models and scale models, and made the calculations of gross floor volume; scale drawings were inserted to KF’s Environmental Model view as pictures and texts. The results indicated that parallel working with conceptual (design ideas) and material artefacts (architectural models, prototypes of apartments, figures) supported one another. The intent was that involving students in modeling practices would help them build domain expertise, epistemological understanding, and skills to create and evaluate knowledge. Further, implications for designing technology-mediated collaborative design processes are discussed.
2018
This paper provides a new perspective for managing and delivering a global design class, and a clear alternative to the traditional joint project for participating institutes. The ‘task-based approach’ used to structure a Global Design class at the University of Strathclyde is described. This entailed the creation of a series of short design exercises to be run in conjunction with three partner institutions: the University of Malta in Msida, Malta; Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia; and Stanford University in Palo Alto, USA. These exercises focussed on specific aspects of distributed working, including synchronous working, asynchronous working and digital library support, according to the location and facilities afforded by each institution. This provides a number of pedagogical and organisation benefits. Students are required to take a more strategic approach to their design work, developing a higher evaluative understanding of the tools and processes requi...
Global Design: Innovative curricula towards global collaboration.
de Vere, I., Gill, C. (2010) Global Design: innovative curricula towards global collaboration. 2nd ConnectED International Conference on Design Education, Sydney, Australia
Increasingly design teams are engaged in distributed globalworking in either synchronous or asynchronous time modes.Such scenarios present diverse workplace challenges withregard to communication, coordination and collaboration.Distributed design teams occupy both physical and virtualenvironments, and project managers must address issuesrelating to trust, unrealistic or inequitable expectations,cultural diversity, challenging logistics and unusual groupdynamics. Differing work methods and behaviour may resultin inter-team rivalry, misconceptions and unintendedconsequences with regard to project intent, processes andoutcome. Tools, teams and environments must be carefullystructured and managed to realise the potential strengths of global distributed design.Contributing to the Erasmus Mundus Global InnovationManagement course, the ‘Global Design’ unit addressesglobal product design and team management, whereconcurrent or sequential activities occur with responsibilitiesshared amongst distributed teams with limited informalinteraction or social connectivity. In the design projectsinternational Masters students at University of Strathclyde,Glasgow collaborate with design and engineering studentsfrom Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne (inasynchronous mode) and the University of Malta (insynchronous mode).Students utilise strategic methods, work cooperatively andmanage workloads, responsibilities and product designdevelopment across cultural, language and time constraints.The experience gained in global distributed working isinvaluable, and students develop understanding of societal,economic and environmental impacts of globalised design,manufacturing and distribution.This paper describes curricula that focuses on processesand tools for global product design and development, andprepares students for non-traditional work environments andpractices. Opportunities exist for development of new globalsynergies of understanding and cooperation, leading towardssustainable, responsible and equitable global productdevelopment. The authors (visiting Erasmus Mundusacademic fellows) joined the course in its second year,contributing with lectures, studio teaching and curriculumdevelopment.
Lessons from Distributed Design Practice
2002
In the final years of the millennium and following the rapid dissemination of computing, we are witnessing the global expansion of the internet. In architecture, the connectivity over this “mother of all networks” is becoming an integral part of design practice and design education. This connectivity can be seen both as an instrument for communication and for the remediation of past conventions. Geographically and temporally distributed design collaboration is illustrated and discussed in this paper as a new condition for making architecture both in terms of limits and opportunities. Furthermore, this paper reports on recent long-distance design collaborations and their impact on the nature of contemporary practice. The authors have attempted to utilize the Virtual Design Studio (VDS) method in a professional context. This method of architectural design is based upon experimental work which began in the early 1990s, primarily in an academic context [A]. It was named the Virtual Desi...
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Twenty-first century engineering student professional skills require the ability to work effectively in multicultural, globally distributed teams. Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) and Penn State University (USA) have formed a collaboration to provide students with an experience in this environment to start requisite skill development. The activity is anchored by a corporate supplied project with realistic open-ended design requirements. The students are expected to mimic the operation of a multinational corporate engineering team to develop a design solution. The collaboration was initiated in September 2014 and launched in January 2015 with Volvo Group as the industrial partner. In addition to the traditional design experience outcomes, the learning objectives from a global perspective are to: (a) understand the impact of engineering in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context; (b) understand cultural/ethnic differences and develop the ability to work sensi...