Katja Fleischmann

Griffith University · Queensland College of Art

This study advances the debate over the role of technology-enhanced teaching in the practice-based design studio. Framed by the exigencies of the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, a detailed survey and follow-up interviews illuminate the transformative experiences among 90 experienced design educators from seven countries. At the heart of this...

The academic questions posed by the introduction of Generative AI (GenAI) into design higher education are many and reflect educators’uneasiness about its ethical use. Like any new radical technology breakthrough, GenAI straddles a pedagogical fence that divides opinion and focuses on a basic question: How can design educators harness Generative AI...

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is re-defining the way higher education design is taught and learned. The explosive growth of GenAI in design practice demands that design educators ensure students are prepared to enter the design profession with the knowledge and experience of using GenAI. To facilitate GenAI’s introduction in a project-...

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, design education experienced a significant shift as traditional studio teaching went online. This transition coincided with industry demands for adaptable, technology-proficient graduates prepared to work and collaborate as part of a decentralized workforce. This study examines how design educators in seven countries ada...

The use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education design programmes is expanding, yet there is little formalized approach to its integration. Professionally, generative AI is starting to become an indispensable tool for ideation and prototyping, two fundamental skills taught in design’s studio pedagogy. Yet this digital leap in...

Design education traditionally centers around the critique as a pivotal assessment process, fostering the development of both explicit and tacit knowledge within the physical studio environment. Ideally, the critique encourages students to develop their creativity, sharpen their thought processes and refine their technique. This study contributes t...

This research examines the experiences of German design educators during the Covid-19 pandemic and explores how these experiences influenced design education's transition to the online studio two years afterwards. The research is based on surveys of 33 German design educators who represent 18 higher education institutions (University/University of...

The first book to focus exclusively on women as subjects in street art, this study, part travelogue and part dialogue, examines these depictions of women artistically, politically, and culturally across continents. A portion of sales are donated to the Global Network of Women's Shelters.

The complex inter-relationships in the world, driven by technological breakthroughs, are prompting design educators to look for new ways to structure their courses to embrace expanding skill sets. Four critical areas to advance design education are highlighted: keeping up with technological advancements; teaching design as a participatory process;...

The process of moving the physical design studio experience, where social interaction is a guiding principle, into a detached virtual environment during the Covid pandemic has prompted design educators to re-evaluate what constitutes a traditional studio-based learning system. This shift is based on classroom experiences after design educators move...

esign education is at the crossroads of re-defining itself in the midst of the COVID pandemic. Design educators are now part of a global movement to work in isolation through web-based communication and collaboration tools, which are also at the heart of a decentralised workforce encountered in the design profession. With its social isolation requi...

Several global reports have concluded that natural resource extraction at its current levels is unsustainable and will lead to the rapid erosion of the environment and tax global economic growth. One of the alternative paradigms to conserve those resources is the Circular Economy, a system driven by innovation that extends the utility of products a...

The heart of design studio teaching is traditionally linked to one-on-one teaching activities and to the exchange of feedback prompting many design educators to think it does not lend itself to online delivery. This study explored how design educators can translate the essence of design studio pedagogy into a blended learning environment. The four-...

The Circular Economy proposes a sustainable economic model that encourages businesses and governments to work towards the goal of conserving natural resources and reducing waste. This model largely relies on government policies that encourage waste reduction and help businesses creating markets to re-purpose that waste profitably. Design-led innova...

Digital technology is reshaping the way higher education subjects are taught, including design. Various design disciplines use studio teaching as a pedagogy to educate students for professions in art and design. Studio teaching bases a high premium on face-to-face interactions which guide learning through dialogue and feedback on individual work. M...

While technology-enhanced learning is changing quickly, design courses have been slow to adopt these technologies. However, that gap may be narrowing. Existing case studies in which the functioning of blended, online, and a combination of blended and online design courses are explored reveal a trend toward incorporating social media and internet pl...

Modern day wall art featuring women as subjects is usually painted by male artists, although women graffiti artists are challenging that male dominance and there are ample examples of their work on social media. The choice of women as subjects dates back to ancient Rome and Greece where idealized female images provided a template for desire, sexual...

p>Modern day wall art featuring women as subjects is usually painted by male artists, although women graffiti artists are challenging that male dominance and there are ample examples of their work on social media. The choice of women as subjects dates back to ancient Rome and Greece where idealized female images provided a template for desire, sexu...

Design has become an important driver of economic innovation and better living globally. This paper looks at the evolution of design within the innovation space and how it is applied in tropical Singapore, a global financial center, and Townsville, a regional city in Australia’s tropical northeast. The general question of whether regional Australia...

At its heart, design is a studio-based discipline, which makes it difficult for design educators to adopt technology-driven changes into an online teaching and learning environment. Globally, few universities offer online undergraduate degree design courses, despite an overall growth in online higher degree curricula. Anecdotal evidence and limited...

The ability to exploit the fruits of agglomeration in metropolitan environments may foster the perceived superiority of metropolitan vis-à-vis rural creative industries practitioners. Based on a unique survey conducted among the business community of the regional city of Townsville, the article quantifies the industry linkages between the creative...

Circular Economy principles and practices can be advanced by design-led innovation. There are a number of factors governing the absence of design-led innovation in the Circular Economy in small businesses and regional economies; foremost among them is communicating a clear definition of what the Circular Economy is to business owners, why it should...

By driving innovation, creative industries can underpin economic development. Much research and policy attention has centred on the geographic clustering of creative industries to spur economic growth. The geographical clustering of creative industries businesses is often viewed as an important driver of economic growth, particularly when it comes...

Professional development for those pursuing a career in creative industries is typically driven by individual practitioners, given most areas (e.g. photography, design, film) do not require membership with a regulatory organisation or evidence of continuing skills development. For those based regionally, opportunities for professional development a...

Design has become an important driver of economic innovation and better living globally. This paper looks at the evolution of design within the innovation space and how it is applied in tropical cities. The role of design has changed from the popular understanding of creating products, driving consumption and being a decorative discipline to drivin...

Creative industries are driving economic growth across the world with their employment of innovation methodologies, including Co-creation and Design Thinking, which has spawned disruptive but beneficial business models. Creative industries are, therefore, cross-pollinating their ideas within other business sectors, primarily in major urban areas. T...

Creative industries are recognised as a key driver of economic growth in both developed and developing nations. In addition to recognising the importance of creative industries, the Australian government has recently renewed a focus on the vast northern tropical area of this island nation as key to future economic and population growth, via the rel...

This chapter shows how peer assessment helped first year creative arts students develop the ability to both critically assess the creative output of others and self-reflect – essential in the development of a creative practitioner. When reading this chapter, you will gain the following three insights: 1. peer assessment displays several benefits a...

Understanding and trouble-shooting microscopic processes involved in laboratory tests are often challenging for students in science education because of the inability to visualize the different steps and the various errors that may influence test outcome. The effectiveness of gamification or the use of game design elements and game-mechanics were e...

The broadening scope of design is changing ways of engaging with stakeholder groups outside the design disciplines. The multidiscipline collaborative space is acknowledged as being essential for design students to experience whether in practical terms in a design project or when engaging in research-based inquiry. While more research is now availab...

Digital fabrication laboratories (such as Fab Labs) are a global initiative of workshops that offer open access to technologies to produce objects from beginning idea to final production. Fab Labs encourage open and free knowledge-sharing among ‘experts’ and the general public. Claims are being made about community-based digital fabrication worksho...

This partnership and project between Townsville City Council and James Cook University focussed on key sub-sectors of the creative industries in Townsville, specifically architecture, design, advertising and marketing, software and digital content and film. Over the course of the 2014 and 2015 calendar years, both Council and JCU staff worked extre...

It has only been two years since I wrote Big Bang Technology: What’s next in design education, radical innovation or incremental change? In that brief time, technology has continued to drive change in how design is practised, produced, accessed, traded, taught and learnt. I have continued to adjust my media design curriculum with small modification...

Democratisation of technology has changed how design is practiced, produced, ‘made', accessed, traded, taught, and learned. Crowdsourcing platforms tap into the creative domains of designers and have changed how business is conducted. Collaborative practices and the rise of the citizen designer are shifting the role of the designer in the creation...

Designing interactive media is a highly dynamic activity with many projects involving extensive use of technology and collaborating with information technology experts. Digital media design students therefore need to be prepared for a volatile technological future and need to learn to work with others. However, few educators provide a rationale for...

Creative industries continue to be recognised as a key contributor to economic growth, given they can be developed without investment in major infrastructure projects that other industries require (e.g. agriculture, resources). In addition to recognizing the importance of creative industries, the current Australian government has recently renewed a...

Work practices in the creative industries have changed significantly since the turn of the twenty-first century. The design profession in particular has been influenced by rapidly emerging digital media practices and processes. While the design sector remains a significant source of employment, in recent years, there has been considerable growth in...

Work-integrated Learning (WIL) is increasingly identified as essential to helping creative arts students transition from university into the creative industries workplace. Off-campus activities, such as work placements, play a major role in educating work-ready graduates. At the same time, increasing enrolment numbers in creative arts education put...

Work Integrated Learning activities including industry placements are supported both by the requirements of professional societies and by the drive of Universities to ensure that their programs have practical relevance. However, this may not be feasible for Information Communication and Technology (ICT) programs in a regional area where local indus...

Designers contribute increasingly to processes that drive economic, social and public innovations. To innovate successfully, cross-disciplinary teams are key. The kind of designer needed in these collaborative teams is described as T-shaped. The stem of the ‘T’ represents specialist knowledge of one or two areas; the horizontal bar stands for a bro...

The education of digital media designers is largely structured around design students working individually on projects or in teams of designers, despite the reality that the intersection of several disciplines is common in the workplace. As a result, design students are being poorly prepared for working as part of multidisciplinary teams. In recogn...

Technology has not only changed the work practice of designers but also how design is taught and learned. The emergence of digital technology has made computer labs a central learning space for design students. Since this change, studio-based learning in its traditional sense appears to be in decline in higher education institutions. This is in spi...

This chapter contributes to the anthology on learning spaces in higher education by exploring the extent to which the computer lab and other formal and informal learning spaces offer a viable alternative to the traditional design studio in supporting students to learn collaboratively and be creative. We define learning space as the various places w...

Since the introduction of digital media, design education has been challenged by the ongoing advancement of technology. Technological change has created unprecedented possibilities for designers to engage in the broadening realm of interactive digital media. The increasing sophistication of interactivity has brought a complexity which needs to be m...

Increasing complexity is one of the most pertinent issues when discussing the role and future of design, designers and their education. The evolving nature of digital media technology has resulted in a profession in a state of flux with increasingly complex communication and design problems. The ability to collaborate and interact with other discip...

Creative Exchange: a multidisciplinary learning and teaching innovation' For some time employers have identified that one of the most sought after graduate attributes is the ability to function as an effective member of a team. In the creative and performing arts disciplines, which are often individually oriented in nature, the development and impl...

Often the traditional creative arts curriculum does not sufficiently respond to, nor reflect, contemporary work practice. Multidisciplinary teams are now increasingly the norm in creative arts practice especially when driven by technological innovation. Drawing on contemporary research that centres on the benefits of multidisciplinary collaboration...

Design thinking is described as a 'human-centred innovation process that emphasizes observation, collaboration, fast learning, visualization of ideas, rapid concept prototyping, and concurrent business analysis, which ultimately influences innovation and business strategy' [1]. This process, best known in the academic environment from the school of...

The value of design has grown far beyond its traditional role as merely a contributor to the well being of society and has recently been recognised as key to the global innovation process and a key to sustainable long term economic development (e.g. CiRAC, 2005, p. 5; Design Singapore Council, 2009; H.M. Treasury, 2005; Woodham, 2010). These develo...

Many typefaces possess next to stylistic qualities also cultural and connotative properties. This paper describes an exploration of signage and lettering in the capital of North Queensland in the quest for a tropical typographic resonance. Is the vernacular typography alive or a vanishing art form? http://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/23762/1/23762-fl...

The dynamic and fast changing nature of digital media presents many challenges for design professionals as well as for design educators. Managing the increasing complexity of technology is one of them. Surprisingly, the digital media design industry's switch to multidisciplinary collaborative teamwork as a response to the increasing complexity of t...

Recent studies show that current higher digital media design education generally fails to equip students with the expertise and skills suited to the requirements of the industry. This is a result of design education largely adhering to a curriculum model developed for and applicable to multimedia design practice in the 1990s. Utilization of this mo...

Undergraduate digital media design education is linked to a professional or vocational model, given that students are typically focused on the industry and its employment opportunities. Introducing authentic real-life scenarios in digital media design education is an effective strategy to replicate industry and the profession in order to prepare st...

Most undergraduate digital media design students launch directly into professional careers after graduation in a wide range of areas in the creative industries. Students usually work as a web or multimedia designer, interface or information designer, graphic designer for print media, or in the moving image or animation industry. While it is importa...