International Design Studio Project: Australian findings on preparing industrial design students for the global emerging economy
Year: 2009
Editor: Clarke, A, Ion, W, McMahon, C and Hogarth, P
Author: Novoa, Mauricio
Series: E&PDE
Section: DESIGN AND EMOTION
Page(s): 495-500
Abstract
Following a presentation in the previous EPDE 08 Barcelona Conference, this paper reports on the progress and Australian findings relating to an international collaborative and distributed design studio project extending over four years between universities in Australia, the Americas and later interested parties in Europe. Primarily the project was run from a third year industrial design studio unit at University of Western Sydney and later it benchmarked Australian students with counterparts elsewhere in Canada (Alberta University) and Chile (Metropolitan University of Technology). While this is an ongoing project still to reveal more results and further joint assessment with partners abroad, this paper builds on previous conference papers explaining more precise structural and technical details to extrapolate lessons learnt and offer some of its main outcomes to others for consideration. Thanks to using latest design, communication, prototyping and simulation technologies, the project focused on challenges to - Education to achieve intended learning outcomes confronted with issues of globalization; - heterogeneous base and retention constraints; - University as gatekeeper of professional standards while confronted with technological change; - and new distributed professional, manufacturing and production developments; - Research on teaching and learning, new methodologies and process relating to design; - manufacturing, implementation and delivery of products and services; - Development of new dynamics of work and production through distributed means of communication and manufacturing (internationalization and globalization of design)
Keywords: Action research, applied research, criterion referenced assessment, socio technical networks, learning by doing, evidence based learning, collaborative design, creativity in education, new pedagogic paradigms, rapid product development, evaluation and assessment, inclusive design, transformative learning, sustainable design