The virtual design studio on the cloud: a blended and distributed approach for technology-mediated design education

The studio is widely accepted as the core in design education because it aims to integrate many curricular topics within its scope. However, learning environments in studio teaching have not been explored and exploited as a response to developing technology and changing socio-cultural context, yet. In order to alleviate the problem, this paper presents an innovative model for a virtual design studio which utilizes social networking media and cloud computing. The virtual design studio is conceptualized as a socio-technical system where intelligence is distributed across people and tools. The study proposes several means of augmenting intelligence in such a studio. The application of the theoretical framework is demonstrated in a real-life case study. The results of an empirical survey show that the proposed model was well accepted by the students. In the paper, the opportunities and challenges of this approach are discussed and suggestions are made for further studies.