THE WORLDWIDE DESIGN STUDIO

This project has been funded as part of the national Business Community Engagement programme by:

Additional information related to the Global Studio is provided within the following publications:

and also as part of the Initiatives programme:

CETL:AfL

2007 2010 7 with 4 Companies and 6 Universities

– collaborative projects undertaken

?Hong-ik University (Korea)?TU Delft (The Netherlands)?Ohio State University (USA)?Napier University (Scotland)?Auburn University (USA) ?RMIT University (Australia)

?Intel (USA)?Motorola (Korea & UK)?Great Southern Wood (USA)?Inverness Medical (UK)

Going Global with Global Partners

During the past four years, a small team of academics from the School of Design at Northumbria University have developed and implemented an innovative international collaborative teaching and research model named 'the Global Studio'. The Global Studio provides a response within Higher Education to shifting trends taking place in manufacturing and the related emergence of globally networked organisations, which provide new challenges for the management of product development teams. The Global Studio links design students, academics and industry partners across the globe from countries such

Erik Bohemia, Neil Smith, Chris Turnock and Trevor DuncanNorthumbria University|School of Design and the Learning Academy

online component of the Global Studio is use of Web 2.0 technologies by academics, business partners and students to communicate across participating organisations. Therefore, one of the aims of this innovative initiative has been to identify and trial a diverse range of collaborative

as Australia, the UK, the USA the Netherlands and Korea. During the past four years nearly 450 students have participated from six international universities. The Global Studio provides students from participating universities with exciting and rich learning experiences.An important aspect of the

Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools that: (a) could support engagement between the university and its external collaborative business and community partners and (b) be safely embedded with the current university IT infrastructure. Thus, various online software, such as Wikis, Plone, Joomla and WordPress, have been tested to explore how these support communication and information exchange via a dedicated project server. This communication has been also supplemented by other ICT technologies supporting synchronous and asynchronous communication.The incorporation of Web 2.0 technologies in

the Global Studio produced a number of unanticipated outcomes. For example, it led to learner-authored content, thus facilitating a student centred teaching and learning approach. It also enabled students to take a leading role in learning. The shared

project pages provide students with an opportunity to learn from and with fellow students from their own and participating universities, thus contributing to the development of student learning communities within and across universities.

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