Abstract:

The work presented in this paper describes a particular case study developed within the scope of the research titled “Collaborative Design: Creation of Future Design Communities” conducted between three universities, Twente School of Engineering Sciences - Industrial Design Engineering, (Holland) Yildiz Technical University School of Architecture (Turkey) and Sarajevo University School of Architecture, (Bosnia&Herzegovina).

It investigates the transformation in architecture education from individual designer to design communities.

Task based online design community combined of the students of three participating schools is created around specific design problem. The problem is derived from the real world setting and so the learning context within which the problem is defined sets the characteristics and complexity of real world setting. The design community is composed of graduate students from different majors such as architecture, industrial design, and construction management. The study is organized in regular academic semester as ‘Design Workshop” (http://www.bot.yildiz.edu.tr/ids09/) course work. Due to nature of design and design activities hybrid approaches that foster the building of design communities are applied.

The paper will discuss measures of the success from the perspective of collaborative design. It will examine the critical factors in international collaborative group working end elaborate Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) for design task oriented groups. Group member’s interaction as well as their problem-solving process will be addressed. The distinction between collaboration and cooperation will be pointed out. The values and strategies of online group leadership and the role of the tutors will be outlined.

Keywords:

collaboration, education, design communities.