Preparing students for the future collaborative economy: A solution for assessing and motivating groupwork for an industrial design studio module

Presenter: Wing C Lau (Industrial Design)

Key words: Collaborative economy, Group work, Industrial design

Teamwork is essential in today’s and future economy regardless of professions. It is particularly true for industrial design since professional
designers are expected to collaborate with other domain experts in order to tackle complex projects from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Unfortunately, simply putting students into a group does not create effective teamwork and most likely will decrease the overall productivity. Past experience suggested that many Mainland Chinese students are uncomfortable with group work resulting in low motivation, participation and performance. The challenge of assessing group work in an introductory industrial design studio module is presented. Our results after implementing the team project management system (SCRUM) suggest that students can excel in a collaborative environment while group work can be assessed reliability using proven components and processes governing team interactions. The old belief that nonperformance is a trait of a particular student (a good student vs. a bad student) should be reconsidered. It appears that student behaviours are modifiable given an appropriate environment and framework for interaction. The limitations and implications of the prescribed method to prepare students for the future collaborative economy are discussed at the end. 

*This is a Teaching Conference Fund presentation