Online delivery of architecture and building design studios: A case study of Central Queensland University

Online delivery offers students flexibility to choose when, where, and with what pace they wish to learn. This mode of delivery, however, presents challenges specifically for design studio units, which depend largely on students’ creative processes and facilitating social interactions with their teachers and fellow students. In practice, design is a collaborative process that engages a range of stakeholders from different disciplines, backgrounds, experiences, expertise, motivations, and interests and integrates their contributions through effective communication. This paper examines challenges, opportunities, and factors that influence students’ experiences of online delivery of architecture and building design studio units. It was developed as part of the project funded by Centre for Learning and Teaching at Central Queensland University (CQU) that explores best practices in online delivery of design studios. We present a thematic analysis of students’ comments from CQU Unit Evaluation Surveys of two units of Bachelor of Building Design that had emphasis on creative design tasks from 2012 to 2017. Students provided feedback on aspects of the units that they were most satisfied with as well as areas that need to be improved in future offerings of the units. The five main themes that were identified from students’ comments had to do with: (1) assessment processes and practices; (2) teacher support and teaching strategies; (3) interactions, communication, and collaboration; (4) unit content and knowledge building; and (5) educational technologies and Computer Aided Design (CAD) software. The paper concludes with a set of pedagogical considerations for online delivery of design studio units.