German Design Educators' Post-Covid Challenges - Online, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Government Data Restrictions

Oct 15, 2026

This research examines the experiences of German design educators during the Covid-19 pandemic and how these experiences shaped design education’s shift to an online studio model two years later. Based on surveys of 33 educators across 18 higher-education institutions and additional surveys plus six follow-up interviews, the study provides a before-and-after snapshot. Results show varied positive and negative educator experiences, including the studio “offshoring” to online platforms and constraints from government data restriction laws. It also considers AI’s future impact and a broader trend toward going offline via a back-to-campus policy.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Design Education in Germany

Post-Covid transition and online studio models

Findings: educator experiences and platform offshoring

Role of government data restrictions

Implications for AI and future studio education

German Design Educators' Post-Covid Challenges: Online, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Government Data Restrictions Dr Katja Fleischmann, Griffith University, Queensland College of Art, Australia Abstract This research examines the experiences of German design educators during the Covid-19 pandemic and explores how these experiences influenced design education's transition to the online studio two years afterwards. The research is based on surveys of 33 German design educators who represent 18 higher education institutions (University/University of Applied Sciences) during the pandemic and 32 surveys and six follow up interviews two years later. This is the first study that focuses exclusively on design education in Germany by presenting a before-and-after contextual snapshot. The results present both positive and negative experiences of educators from a wide range of design domains. The ‘offshoring’ of the studio to Internet-based communication and file sharing platforms during the pandemic has profoundly altered the perceptions and practices of design educators in Germany, where governmental hurdles, such as data restriction laws, are blocking the full integration of online technology in design education. The findings focusing on German design educator experiences are presented within the context of their international colleagues' experiences from a study conducted earlier. This research also touches on the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the future of design education as well as a general trend to go offline by encouraging a back-to-campus policy. Keywords design studio pedagogy, online design education, blended design studio, Artificial Intelligence, technology-enhanced design studio, blended teaching Introduction The closure of universities during the Covid-19 pandemic has led to a rapid turnaround in the employment of Internet-based file sharing and communication technology in an attempt to create online design studios. Design educators who did not routinely use these online platforms pre-pandemic had to learn to use them quickly to approximate face-to-face design classrooms (Jones & Lotz, 2021) . Design educators produced a wide range of solutions to convert to teaching and learning design online in what is normally a face-to-face teaching studio pedagogy. It is the face-to-face aspect of studio-based design education that has been disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic which forced the closure of physical design studios and prompted educators to flip their approach to online models (Fleischmann, 2020c, Jones & Lotz, 2021; Marshalsey & Sclater, 2020; Yorgancıoğlu, 2020) . The pandemic also digitally re-cast the design studio's experiential model and social dynamic where students share ideas and educators act as mentors in one-to-one and one-to-many physical spaces. Lehtonen et al.,(2021) have characterised this online transition as “a sort of living lab”. Since the height of the pandemic, researchers have focused their inquiries on the strategies employed that helped make online studios in the higher education environment work and detailed those student and educator experiences that presented challenges (e.g., Charters & Murphy, 2021; Fleischmann, 2020c, 2021, 2022; Jones, 2021; Hepburn & Borthwick, 2021) . Although design domains varied, the literature supports the contention that online technology has an important role to play in the future of design education globally, not solely in western developed nations (e.g., Cho et al., 2022; Fleischmann, 2021; Izadpanah et al., 2022; Jones & Lotz, 2021) . This paper focuses on where the German experience of incorporating online technology fits into how design is taught and learned in the contemporary design studio post pandemic. The experiences of German design educators have been absent in the debate on technology’s incorporation in design education’s future. The research presented addresses that gap. This two-part study explores the initial tr

FAQs

What does the study investigate about German design educators after Covid-19?

It examines how German design educators experienced the Covid-19 pandemic and how those experiences influenced the shift to an online studio model two years later.

How was the research conducted?

The study used surveys of 33 German design educators across 18 higher-education institutions during the pandemic, followed by 32 surveys and six follow-up interviews two years later.

What barriers hinder the full integration of online technology in German design education?

Government hurdles, especially data restriction laws, block the complete integration of online technology in design education.

Oct 15, 2026

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