Advanced Technologies of Design Education and Learning Workshop at CAADFutures 2011 (July 2011, Belgium)

Location: University of Liege, Belgium
Dates: 4 July 2011
Website: http://www.lucid.ulg.ac.be/conferences/caadfutures2011/Workshop4.html
Deadline: 10 June 2011

The aim of this workshop on advance technologies for design teaching is to provide a platform for further discussion at the intersection of theory and practice. This workshop will be devoted to papers concerned with design pedagogy and the challenge of new emerging educational paradigms of emerging information and communication technologies. To advance this important topic, we seek papers that provide theoretical or empirical contributions to the role of advance technologies in design pedagogy.

Topics are related to the application or reflection of information and communication technologies in design, which may
include but are not limited to:

• Frameworks for teaching design with emerging technologies;
• Assessment of design skill;
• Particular design processes, how they represent knowledge, and how they facilitate design education;
• Collaborative learning in 3D virtual worlds;
• Creative development in design;
• Facilitating learning utilizing digital design spaces;
• Supporting collaboration and communication in design;
• Ideation and virtuality;
• Multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural design collaboration as an outcome of virtual design collaboration, and
• Supporting student learning in a media-rich environments.

Background and Motivation

Educational technologies enhance the learning of science, engineering and technology through providing access to world-wide resources; facilitating the accumulation and presentation of data; and enabling communication, interaction, and collaboration among students and instructors (Obonyo and Issa 2010). In particular, integration of communication and information technologies into design curricula offers significant potentials for design schools, through their capacity to facilitate designing in new learning environments, advancing research and development in learning theories. As a result, there have been significant changes in design curricula to accommodate new demands, opportunities, processes and potentials provided by digital media and computational tools. With the introduction of communication and information technologies into education, students find themselves in media-rich, distributed, synthetic environments, empowered by new tools and design tools, becoming avatars who immersed into virtual reality to collaborate and learn by doing. Learning becomes most effective when students work in groups, articulate their ideas, question and challenge each others’ ideas, engaging in total collaboration in the resolution of design problems.

In design education, web-based tools have been widely used (Craig and Zimring 2000); in particular in the form of online design studios. Broadfoot and Bennet (2003) define online design studio as a web-based studio, which is a ‘networked studio, distributed across space and time’; such that the participants of an online design studio maybe in different locations handling design communications via computer. Recently, virtual design studios (Maher 1999; Çağdaş, Kavakli et al. 2000; Kvan 2001; Schnabel, Kvan et al. 2001) have been set up by architecture and design schools around the globe aiming to provide a shared “place” where distant design collaboration especially synchronised communications and design activities can take place. The forms of virtual design studios vary from the early approach of digital design data sharing to the more recent 3D virtual world approach where the designs as well as the designers and learners are simulated and represented in the virtual worlds allowing the so called “design and learning within the design”. This new phenomenon has caught the attention of many design academics. Kvan (2001) argues that while design education has traditionally focused on the product, virtual design studios allow students to learn more about the design process. Dickey (2005) suggests 3D virtual environments can provide “experiential” and “situated” learning. Clark and Maher (2005) examine the role of place in 3D virtual learning environments that encourage “collaboration and constructivism”. Wyeld et al. (2006) focus on the cultural aspect in virtual learning environments where students from different cultural backgrounds design and learn collaboratively. The effects of advance technologies on the learning process, on the creativity and on the quality of the design solutions and design process are hot debates in academia.

Submission

People interested in the workshop are required to submit discussion papers (min 5; max. 6 pages) that will be used to structure the discussion in the workshop. The discussion papers can elaborate existing issues with awareness and reflection in  the area. Please email your paper to leman.gul@uni.sydney.edu.au

Submission system and format

Submissions should use http://www.lucid.ulg.ac.be/conferences/caadfutures2011/Template_%26_guidelines.html.
It can be 6 to 8 pages long.

Important dates

Submission deadline: 10.06.2011
Notification of acceptance: 22.06.2011

Organizers

Assoc. Prof. Dr. L. Figen Gül (International University of Sarajevo, leman.gul@uni.sydney.edu.au)
Senior Lecturer Dr. Ning Gu (University of Newcastle, ning.gu@newcastle.edu.au)
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Anthony Williams (University of Newcastle, tony.williams@newcastle.edu.au)