Studio-based teaching is well established in creative disciplines such as architecture and the arts. Some research points to studio-based educational settings as possible catalysts for fostering creativity and complex problem-solving. The Collaborative Online Studio Initiative (COSI) is a new approach to educational technology that focuses on and provides crucial infrastructure for collaborative online learning communities in engineering courses.

The proposed method is a cohesive system, based on online communities and internet based communication such as blogs, wikis, forums and virtual communities, to represent an alternative strategy for studio based learning. Google’s OpenSocial and Facebook are ideal platforms to support the implementation of such a strategy. The project aims at exploring and understanding the use of such online communication tools to help students work collaboratively complementary to physical space and face-to face interaction. This strategy is not meant to replace the physical studio environment but will build upon the established strengths of the traditional studio method and employ emerging educational technologies. COSI is configured to foster a student-centred learning environment for cross-disciplinary collaborative work, team based projects and individual research.

Our main objective, then, is to implement, and maintain a comprehensive web-based environment that fosters information sharing and supports the community of student and faculty. An essential question is how efficient this strategy can be in delivery of engineering, IT and multimedia courses. The role of social interactions in fostering creativity is a relatively new research area that we plan to explore.

Authors: Aaron Tan

Event: SF08: Speed Papers

← View all submissions for this event.