How am I supposed to tell my mother what happened in today's class - at the intersection between blended learning and design (thinking) education

Oct 15, 2026

Since the beginning of the 21st century, design education has expanded across disciplines to build job-relevant skills and address wicked problems. While design (thinking) education often relies on hands-on, studio-based, collaborative learning, the Covid-19 pandemic challenges the assumption of face-to-face access. This paper investigates students’ perceptions in a problem-based blended course on design and multidisciplinary teamwork by analyzing forty-seven students’ visual learning diaries. Results identify triggers for personal development, exploring ambiguity, and technology providing structure, forming a learning frame that informs pedagogical implications for student agency.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages21

Reading Time53 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Background: design education and design thinking

From studio-based learning to online/blended environments

Research question and contribution

Blended learning definition and course context

“How am I supposed to tell my mother what happened in today's class?”: at the intersection between blended learning and design (thinking) education Miikka J . Lehtonen, Rikkyo University, Japan Abstract Since the beginning of the 21st century, design education has been gaining momentum across disciplines as a means to equip students with skills relevant in the job market as well as to tackle wicked problems. One of the core assumptions behind integrating design education to other disciplines focuses on the need for hands-on and experiential opportunity exploration and collaborative learning, often prevalent in studio-based settings. However, as the Covid-19 pandemic has shown, physically accessing the campus or the studio is not always feasible, so how might this impact multidisciplinary design education? Acknowledging the notion that we no longer can take face-to-face learning for granted, this paper ask what aspects of design (thinking) education could be delivered in blended environments. I contribute to this body of knowledge by investigating students’ perceptions of their learning about design methods and processes in a problem-based blended learning course focusing on design and multidisciplinary teamwork. Visual learning diaries of forty-seven students were analyzed to better understand how blended learning can support or hinder learning about applying design to societal issues. Data analysis revealed three aspects – triggers for personal development, exploring ambiguity, and technology as providing structure – that form the concept learning frame. This concept sheds light on how the students perceived blended learning elements influencing their learning about how design could be applied to societal issues. Findings contribute to further dissolving the physical-digital dichotomy in design studio and education. Pedagogical implications focus on how blended learning can promote student agency in design education across disciplines. Keywords: blended learning, design education, design thinking, problem-based learning, student agency Introduction Since the beginning of the 21st century, design education has been gaining momentum across disciplines as a means to equip students with skills relevant in the job market as well as to tackle wicked problems (e.g. Çeviker-Çınar et al., 2017; Garbuio et al., 2018) . Furthermore, the concept of design thinking has popularised designerly ways of thinking and crafting (Dunne & Martin, 2006; Garbuio et al., 2018; Rowe, 1987), often compressing the material and cognitive complexities into a set of tools and methods (e.g. empathy map and customer journey) utilised in a linear fashion. Building on the above, one of the core assumptions behind integrating design education to other disciplines focuses on the need for hands-on and experiential opportunity exploration and collaborative learning, often prevalent in studio-based settings (e.g. Barry & Meisiek, 2015; Brandt et al., 2013; Garbuio et al., 2018) . In their review on design thinking courses across 28 universities, Wrigley and Straker (2017, p. 383) highlight how teaching design thinking “should take a problem-based and studio-based approach”. However, as the Covid-19 pandemic has shown, physically accessing the campus or the studio is not always feasible, so how might this impact multidisciplinary design education? Indeed, it can be argued that design thinking’s signature pedagogies (Shulman, 2005) have been understood to rely, to a large extent, on face-to-face learning in studio-based environments, and similarly Jones and Lotz (2021, p. 4) argue in their editorial “that moving studio-based curricula online is a non-trivial exercise”, yet “being able to make informed and effective change is important, as well as being able to articulate and support such change in education settings that might not fully understand the modes of learning and teaching required for design education”(Jones & Lotz, 2021, p. 6) . In othe

FAQs

What problem does the paper investigate about design education?

It examines how multidisciplinary design (thinking) education is affected when face-to-face studio access is no longer guaranteed and learning must occur in blended environments.

How was student learning investigated in the study?

The study analyzed visual learning diaries from forty-seven students enrolled in a problem-based blended learning course focused on design methods and multidisciplinary teamwork.

What three aspects emerged from the data analysis?

The findings highlight three aspects: triggers for personal development, exploring ambiguity, and technology as providing structure, which together form a learning frame.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by RuangKosong