Atelier-D: Achieving Transformation, Enhanced Learning and Innovation through Educational Resources in Design

Using an online design studio environment
Lead by Peter Lloyd with support from Theodore Zamenopoulos.

Design education must prepare students for global interactions - the interconnectedness of resources, approaches and processes in designing. How can a Level 1 design course contribute to this? This element will explore the limits of knowing about global design processes through the words and pictures of others and explore the possibility and viability of a global collaborative design studio project in the Design Thinking course.

The delivery of this CDI has been delayed because of the late development of OpenDesignStudio, an application being developed by the Open University’s Learning and Teaching Solutions Unit. A functioning version of OpenDesignStudio was originally planned to be completed in June 2009, but additional software complexity has meant that a test version will not now be available until the beginning of November 2009.

The revised plan is now to recruit 25 participants, from current undergraduate design courses, to complete two short activities that involve (1) uploading images to OpenDesignStudio and (2) commenting on other people’s images. The CDI will deliver an evaluation of the design work produced, along with participant feedback about the usability and effectiveness of OpenDesignStudio. The timeplan reveals that this CDI will still inform the creation of the PDIs taking place in 2010.

Timeplan
2nd November: Test version of OpenDesignStudio completed
2nd November: Recruitment of participants begins
16th – 23rd November: Participants complete task
30th November: Write-up of results