Collaborative design in education : evaluation of three approaches

Collaboration in design can take place in a physical, social space, in a distributed or virtual environment, or in a combination of both. Design teams use a range of ICT means to support both synchronous and asynchronous communication. While these tools are designed to facilitate collaboration, the collaboration process still requires planning and organisation in a social context, which are activities that students and professionals need to learn. In current practice there is a need for designers and design managers who have the competences to collaborate in design and to organise distributed collaboration processes. At the department of Architecture, Building, and Planning at Eindhoven University of Technology, we have developed a course on Collaborative Design in the Master of Science curriculum. This course addresses both the organisational, social, and technical issues of collaboration in design. The paper introduces the objectives and educational methods used in this course. It describes the experiences of both teachers and students that were gained now that the course was taught in three subsequent years