Designing online teaching and learning experiences using the conversational framework: reflections from a design discipline

Abstract

Teaching and learning (T&L) in design has historically relied on a face-to-face approach necessitated by the discipline's technical, practical, and pedagogical requirements. Close, interactive, and iterative engagements between lecturers and students in the thinking, planning, and making processes is integral. However, contemporary digital media and technological developments and affordances, along with insights from the COVID-19 pandemic, continue to provide opportunities previously unexplored, or only partially explored, in online design education. We seek to understand how insights and lessons gleaned during and after the COVID-19 pandemic-enforced lockdowns can be applied in designing online T&L in design. We draw on Laurillard’s conversational framework’s interactive and adaptive strategies in leveraging contemporary digital media affordances in online teaching. Conducted between July 2020 and October 2022 by three lecturers in a design department, the study takes a reflective practice approach and draws on emergent design principles. These provided a foundation for rethinking pedagogy, blending research and teaching, and leveraging technology for T&L in design disciplines. Our findings show that online T&L in design requires intentional pedagogy-focused training, equitable access to resources for students, structures for peer collaboration, flexibility in curriculum delivery, and attention to student and staff emotional, psychological, and financial well-being.