Reflecting on Hybrid Learning in Studio-based Courses

AUTHORS

• Sourojit, Ghosh, Human Centered Design and Engineering, UW Seattle
• Sarah, Coppola, Human Centered Design and Engineering, Seattle

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ABSTRACT

We will draw on our experience of co-teaching a hybrid class during Fall 2021 titled HCDE 318: Introduction to User-Centered Design, a course consisting of 39 undergraduate juniors and seniors majoring in Human-Centered Design & Engineering. This group-project-based course takes students on a 10-week journey through the user-centered design process to provide a hands-on design experience. In our hybrid course, we utilized a complex set up involving several different types of technology: two laptops, an OWL meeting device, and a room consisting of two independent projectors.

We will autoethnograhically reflect on our experiences navigating through the pedagogical, social, emotional, and technological challenges encountered throughout the course. We will also interview students who took the course about their experiences in the hybrid setting. We will investigate their experiences and how the technology used played a role. We believe that we will obtain rich qualitative and quantitative results beyond what is typically obtained through official teaching evaluations. Based on 2 interviews so far, our preliminary results show that the hybrid model and the ability to make the choice to attend in-person or remotely on a day-to-day basis contributed positively to their course experience.

Thinking beyond the pandemic, we intend to assess the effectiveness of the hybrid mode of teaching for this course, and hope to extrapolate this result to other forms of studio courses. We hope that this investigation will generate some tips for how to design inclusive studio courses in this pandemic setting and be useful to all instructors teaching studio courses in this time, as they make choices about how to design the most effective classroom experience under the world's constraints.

SUMMARY

RESEARCH QUESTION

How effective is a synchronous online model for teaching a design studio course, and how can it be improved?

RESEARCH METHODS / SCHOLARLY BASIS

Empirical investigation through student surveys and interviews.

RESULTS

Hybrid learning worked effectively.

APPLICATION

Future studio based courses can be run in a synchronous hybrid format.