Reshaping design education: teaching graphic design online and onsite

Abstract

The ways in which embodied relations between student and teacher in the design studio may contribute to design pedagogy is little understood. The development of the online design studio is thought to pose a risk to design learning and teaching as it separates student and teacher bodies and, therefore, may ‘block’ these little understood practices. Previous studies of the online design studio have tended to focus on instrumental concerns, such as curriculum delivery and online communication, rather than on the ways the configuration of learning spaces influences design pedagogy, or how the embodied practices of the design studio are translated into digital spaces.

This study, set in the graphic design studio in a private, US-based art and design university, unearths fresh understandings of the material practices that characterise graphic design teaching in onsite settings, and how these practices are translated/transformed when design teaching moves online. It provides a fine-grained understanding of how human bodies, things, and the spaces of the onsite, online, and blended graphic design studio produce particular kinds of pedagogies. This research directly compares online and onsite practices in the same kinds of classes, showing the continuity between the online, onsite, and blended practices and challenging the received view that what takes place online is radically different to what occurs onsite.

More specifically, the graphic design critique is shown by this study to be composed socio-materially—made up of people, talk, spaces and things, assembling in various ways—and displays a variable ontology as it moves from onsite to online. In this movement, there is a shift from a more embodied pedagogy, to more textual knowledge practices. This results in online pedagogy that is more structured and reflective. This shift has significant implications for the ‘good practice’ of graphic education in the online environment.