Collaboration and student engagement in design education

One of the great paradoxes in design education is that undergraduate students are encouraged to study and model the behaviors and attitudes of famous designers, but without being aware that such esteemed individuals rarely work in isolation. The vast majority of designers work in teams, as part of both the conceptualization and production processes. Even 'design-auteurs' or 'artist-designers' must still interact with, respectively, clients, consultants and contractors, or patrons, curators and publishers. As a result of this, collaboration is widely considered an essential part of the design process and a critical skill for developing a career in the design industries. However, while design practitioners and the professional bodies that represent them acknowledge the importance of groups and teams, there has been a general reluctance (either an unwillingness or inability) to emphasize the importance or team processes, or em­bed the development of team skills, in undergraduate design curricula. There are many reasons for this situation existing, but we cannot underestimate the general attitude, implicit in much design education and promulgated through the design media, that creativity is an individual trait.

Intercultural dialogue through design (iDiDe ): a model of intercultural collaboration and student engagement

Intercultural dialogue through design, globally known as “iDiDe” pronounced i-dee-dee) was initiated by an Australian university in 2011 or architecture and built environment disciplines. Set within the context of international education and internationalisation, which are the focus of Australian universities this century, iDiDe offers a model of intercultural collaboration and student engagement. iDiDe is more than a generic international study tour. Firstly, there is collaborative academic leadership that comes from institutional partnerships between Australia and five Asian nations (Malaysia, Thailand, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka), secondly, intercultural dialogue and intercultural understanding underpin the pedagogical approach, and thirdly, iDiDe projects extend discipline specific learning into the realms of reality. This chapter is an expose of iDiDe. It seeks to determine what elements of the model contribute to intercultural collaboration and student engagement. Findings are evaluated for their impact upon participants. The potential for transformative learning and response to global citizenship are discussedalong with future research.

The impact of teaching models, group structures and assessment modes on cooperative learning in the student design studio

As a result of ever diminishing teaching resources, an increasing number of architectural educators are setting group design projects, rather then spreading their time thinly over a large number of individual projects. This allows them to co-ordinate longer and more in-depth review sessions on a smaller number of assignment submissions. However, while the group
model may offer an authentic learning model by reflecting design in practice, the approach is not without its obvious shortcomings as a teaching archetype for the assessment of the knowledge and skill competencies of individual students. Hence, what is clear is the need for a readily adoptable andragogy for the teaching and assessment of group design projects.
The following paper describes the background, methodology and findings of a Strategic Teaching and Learning Grant funded research project carried out in the year 2005 at the School of Architecture and Building at Deakin University. The project aimed to inform a change of classroom/studio practice governing the assemblage, teaching and assessment of student design teams. The development through these changes of cooperative and student centred learning principles focused on effective design collaboration and fair assessment should, it will be argued, lead to an enhanced group-learning experience in studio, which will subsequently and ultimately enhance professional practice.

The effects of facilitation on punctuated equilibrium in e-collaboration projects

Information technology has transformed the “heartland” of education around the world. Classrooms are global, students international, but traditional methods and their adjacent challenges persist or are exacerbated in online schoolhouses. There is reason to believe that team performance of online students completing team projects can be significantly improved by the active participation of a facilitator. What could explain such improvement? Given the communication barriers that learners can experience using e-learning technologies, the skill of a teacher at facilitating an understanding of e-collaboration and the prescient need to facilitate collaborative skills at all times is essential to a successful educational result. There may also be generational learning style issues to consider. One practical, proven tool is progress reporting. This paper reviews the literature and reflects on author experiences in the online education of Management students at universities in the United States and Australia to draw theoretical connections with communication, leadership, and punctuated equilibrium relevant to contemporary educational practice. The implications of effective facilitation of student teams for Management education and management of student performance are explored.

Promoting group participation : a conscious approach to collaboration

Collaborative group work has increasingly been adopted as a learning and assessment tool at tertiary level, yet despite the prevalence of group
activities within the language classroom, feedback from university faculties is that international students struggle in this area. While the problem is
one of communication, language proficiency is only part of the picture. Diverse cultural expectations and students’ individual personalities play a significant role. In light of this, Deakin University English Language Institute (DUELI) decided to focus on successful participation in group work as a specific learning outcome in the EAP stream. Beginning with the recognition that having students work in groups was not, by itself, sufficient to equip them with the necessary skills for successful
collaboration, it was decided to develop a program designed to instill in students a more conscious awareness of group dynamics and of their own adopted roles and behaviours within groups. Our central aim was to encourage students to take responsibility for fostering a group dynamic
that benefited from the diversity of the student population and to raise students’ confidence in tackling academic group work.

Listening to student opinions about group assessment.

This paper illustrates the way two teacher-researchers are listening to mathematics education students’ voices in a Masters course. Group assignments have their advantages but it is difficult to ensure strong collaboration, high-level analysis and discussion, a good spread of work between group members, and positive social interactions. This research set out to explore one way of attending to these problems in a mathematics education Masters unit. Students submitted (unmarked) individual essays before combining them to create (graded) group assignments. They completed surveys about group work before and after this activity, and some were interviewed. Expecting individual work before group work led to increased levels of engagement, very high quality work, use of skills in analysis and critique, and good levels of student satisfaction.

Web 2.0 for networked learning : from collaboration to shared cognition and knowledge networking

This poster presents research-in-progress into the educational affordances of so-called Web 2.0 sites, services, with a particular emphasis on those applications that involve forms of shared human-machine cognition and that promote public knowledge networking. This research involves reviewing many hundreds of Web 2.0 tools and selecting approximately 50 for further analysis and exploration as learning applications. In doing so, the research will generate examples of unusual affordances provided by Web 2.0; it will also present a more structured categorisation of the kinds of uses and benefits of these tools. This approach is valuable because much current research and analysis of the impact of Web 2.0 on education, particularly higher education, has emphasised a relatively limited array of tools – principally blogs, wikis and social networking services – that offer educators and students opportunities for student-led collaborative work. Such opportunities involve strong emphasis on constructivist pedagogy: students’ interactions with each other, mediated via the Internet, are viewed as the positive benefit which networked learning can provide. However, Web 2.0 is far more than just collaboration, and associated shared self-expression. In particular, Web 2.0 includes many examples of services that take one form of input from a user and, rather than just sharing it with others, enable the transformation of that input into different forms, either as visualisations, maps, or other re-representations. Web 2.0 is also starting to see the development of knowledge-work engines that embody the concept of shared cognition, in which the service and the user cooperate in the production of some final knowledge output or which present to users knowledge that has already been processed more extensively than through simple searching. Web 2.0 is also closely associated with the idea that knowledge work is now networked and distributed; it involves users appropriating, creating and sharing knowledge products in a very public way, far beyond the narrow ‘audience’ of a particular course or program of study. The research presented in this poster will provide, firstly, examples of the Web 2.0 tools which emphasise these additional ways of exploiting the Internet for networked learning; secondly, the research will provide a first iteration of the overarching structure of categories and classifications which can be used to assess any proposed Web 2.0 application in terms of its affordances for learning as knowledge networking. By understanding these technologies, truly collaborative networked learning can be developed that blends with the emerging cultures of online behaviour increasingly common to contemporary student populations.

Blending student technology experiences in formal and informal learning

In this article, we discuss the importance of recognizing students' technology-enhanced informal learning experiences and develop pedagogies to connect students' formal and informal learning experiences, in order to meet the demands of the knowledge society. The Mobile-Blended Collaborative Learning model is proposed as a framework to bridge the gap between formal and informal learning and blend them together to form a portable, flexible, collaborative and creative learning environment. Using this model, three categories of mobile application tools, namely tools for collaboration, tools for coordination and tools for communication, have been identified as pertinent in blending formal and informal learning, and they can be connected seamlessly to provide an effective learning mechanism to support the learning process.

Fostering connections for student success: using Appreciative Inquiry to promote positive growth in a university course

This paper reports on a study of the review process of the first iteration of a recentlyimplemented higher education program. Specifically, the paper discusses the inaugural review of a two-year graduate level pre-service teaching program at an urban Australian university. The aims of the study into this Master of Teaching program were twofold. First, it sought to gain an understanding of the strengths and limitations of the program from the perspectives of the staff members involved and to explore avenues for positive growth. Second, it examined the extent to which the application of Cooperrider, Whitney, Stavros and Fry’s (2008) Appreciative Inquiry (AI) framework can be used effectively in the review of higher education program reviews to foster connections for student success. The AI model promotes collegial reflective practice and the generation of positive resolutions and thus aligned with the purposes of the review which were to foster collaboration, strengthen staff morale and, subsequently, build a stronger program for students. This paper provides a perceptual account of the AI review process as reported by the three facilitators involved. The discussion and findings included in this paper contribute to international literature in the areas of higher education program evaluation, organisational reform and Appreciative Inquiry.

Infusing instructional design principles into an active student-centred social learning framework

Social and participatory media offer a plethora of ways for students to communicate, collaborate, and learn in schools. Using a social learning approach, Casey (2013a) investigated ways that social media could be integrated into Australian public high school classrooms to enhance student learning. In the process, she developed a social learning framework as discussed in Casey (2013b). Similarly, Davidson-Shivers and Hulon (2013; Hulon & Daidson-Shivers, 2013) suggest ways to employ ID principles to prepare college instructors and pre-service teachers to integrate technology into classrooms. Prior to that, Davidson-Shivers with Rasmussen (2006) developed an instructional design (ID) model for creating effective Web-based learning environments. Through collaboration, Casey and Davidson-Shivers consider a wide range of social learning and instructional design principles and approaches to help develop frameworks for new media integration that can work within varying levels of education.

Improving student-industry engagement through project oriented curriculum

Industry expects a creative and innovative academic practice that provides students with valuable practical knowledge focused on graduate ready skills for future careers. The learning environment in engineering is inadequate for students to become a skillful graduate. The practical role of engineering is gained through working on real world problems in an industry collaborative environment through projects. Industry academia collaboration seems to be actively increasing in the development of engineering education in various parts of the globe. The close relationship between industry and academia is a vital component of the engineering pedagogy to improve student engagement in industry through projects. By engaging students with industry, students will acquire global perspective about the core attributes expected in future engineering jobs. In today’s large-scale industrial market, companies tend to prefer graduates with design skills attained through the project approach. Thus, universities should open their doors and accept the challenges of interacting with students with industrial experiences and expectations. This paper is focused on improving student industry engagement through project/design oriented curriculum. Through quantitative and qualitative research, the paper shows the industry perspectives and students views on university and industry collaboration. The research results show that students and industry can possibly maintain their engagement by providing regular feedback, reviewing goals and objectives, improving communication, keeping focused, and sharing a similar vision.

Blended learning and the flipped classroom: The affordances of cloud based, located, and virtual world environments to support student learning

In this paper the author reports on the introduction of the flipped classroom integrating located, online and virtual world learning environments to support the collaborative lived experiences of a group of students and the educator participating in a higher education undergraduate art unit, Navigating the Visual World. A qualitative narrative methodology, A/r/tography, incorporating both image making and textual recording is used to explore and identify interwoven aspects of the artist/ researcher/ educator relationship in the creative artistic process of exploring concepts of identity within inquiry based art practice. Selected student examples, including a collaborative group assessment project demonstrate effective student engagement with experiential blended learning within the flipped classroom.

Blended learning and art education: student participation in a collaborative, authentic assessment project

This paper reports on higher education student engagement with blended learning experiences incorporating located (on campus), cloud based (online e-learning ) and graphically built, socially networked 3D multi user virtual environments (MUVES). Immersion in this environment enabled collaboration between two groups of students enrolled in separate undergraduate art education and public relations units, to identify, develop and participate in an integrated, authentic assessment project. It is contended that immersive blended learning experiences support creative problem solving and encourages synchronous and asynchronous student participation in authentic problem solving and collaborative practice. Interacting with co-learners, students gain knowledge and skills through situated learning, defined as the application of knowledge, learned in one setting and transferred to another and where immersion in a virtual learning experience leads to higher level engagement on the transfer task in a real world setting. In this project, collaborative blended learning involved the creation of a collection of digital artworks by art education students using computer software located in a real world environment. These artworks were curated and exhibited by the students in a virtual gallery they designed and built on Deakin Arts Education island in Second Life. For public relations students, the virtual art exhibition was the focus of a virtual campaign, designed, researched and developed by them to promote the Deakin Virtual Art Gallery on Deakin island in Second Life. The final promotion for the Virtual Gallery was presented by the students at a symposium in both real world and virtual world environments.

Small rural school leadership: creating opportunity through collaboration

Leading a small rural school presents specific challenges for principals: there are fewer people to perform as many tasks as exist in larger schools; teaching consumes a greater percentage of leaders' time in multigrade, mixed-ability classes; there is often limited or no access to resources that are taken for granted elsewhere; and there is no dilution of stakeholder expectations regarding school improvement, policy accountability or student achievement outcomes. Small rural school leadership is complex, diverse and labour-intensive and the exigencies of life in small rural communities create unconventional leadership circumstances. Daunting as this may sound, many principals revel in small rural school settings, achieving success and professional enjoyment due in large part to the ways in which they address these particular challenges. They have recast contextual challenges as opportunities, which is the focus of this chapter.