Conceptual model for an ICT-enabled educational platform for collaborative design

Abstract

Almost all design related practices (architecture, architectural engineering, interior architecture/design, landscape architecture, urban design, industrial design, fashion and visual communication design) heavily depend on collaboration between colleagues from the same or different disciplines. However, practitioners who collaborate in practice, seldom have the opportunity to collaborate during design education. Having the opportunity to collaborate on educational design projects and acquiring collaboration skills and experience during design education should contribute to the quality and efficiency of future professional collaborations. Recent advancements in information and communication technologies have enabled collaboration during the process of the design studio, especially between geographically dispersed parties, but initiating and establishing such collaboration opportunities depends on the parties' singular efforts. This paper reviews previous and ongoing efforts at introducing multi-disciplinary collaborative design studios in Turkey and the USA and proposes a conceptual model for an online collaboration network that aims at promoting and facilitating collaboration among design schools and design instructors/students/ researchers. The network, establishing an educational platform for collaborative design (EPCOD) is intended to comprise a digital pool of design projects, enabling potentials of design collaboration for students from the same or different disciplines. It is designed to be accessible to all design schools all over the world, forming a specific and rich platform for design education. The role of current and emerging information and communication technologies in facilitating the proposed network-based collaboration is also discussed. © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group.