Live demos are the traditional method used by design instructors to teach new tools or techniques in design courses. Although this is generally an effective strategy, this method has several disadvantages.
As the tool developed as part of this research is intended to meet the needs of those who will be using it, in order to discover and focus on those needs, questions that will be considered include the following:
How can a tool be developed to make live in-class demos in design education available online, in order to meet the needs of instructors and students?
An educational digital tool can be developed to make available important components of a live demo in design education, without sacrificing interactivity and adding functionality relevant to instructors’ and students’ needs.
Developing a digital tool to improve the experience of instructors and students using live demos in technology-based design courses.
In design education courses, students often must learn how to use new tools or techniques in order to complete course projects. Traditionally, instructors teach many of these new skills via live demos, in which they walk the students through each day’s assigned topics while students follow along. This is generally an effective strategy, as students move toward learning goals in a step-by-step process. However, this method also has several disadvantages, to be explored in this research. These disadvantages could be solved by making the demos available for students to review on their own time. This research will explore and address the problems that instructors and students face due to the limitations of the traditional live, in-class demo. This research will lead to a tool that instructors can easily use to make their demos available for students to use when needed, without sacrificing the interactivity of the traditional live demo environment, adding useful functionality that has not traditionally been a part of live demos, and keeping in mind the needs of instructors and students.
Students are forced to multitask during the live demos, as they simultaneously attempt to follow the instructor’s movements, duplicate those movements, and take notes. Students often forget much of the demo’s content before applying it to the course projects, or they forget or overlook the demo’s specific learning goals or important terms during the course of the demo itself. Furthermore, topics taught via live demos occasionally have to be broken up into two or more class sessions, either because of the complexity of the topic, or due to the instructor having to interrupt the demo to attend to students’ questions and problems. The answers to students’ pertinent questions during the demo often could be useful for all the students to refer to while working on projects, but this is not easily done.
These problems could be solved by means of a tool that can make the demo available for students to review on their own time. It is important for this tool to avoid sacrificing the interactivity of the traditional live demo environment, while at the same time adding useful functionality that has not traditionally been a part of live demos. To accomplish this, the digital tool should make available the following: