The online teaching approach in higher learning education has received an active scale application amongst universities since the unprecedented event of the Covid19 pandemic in 2020. Despite its broad application in various subjects, online teaching seems to be a significant obstacle for the industrial design model-making subjects that require hands-on experience learning. Therefore, the author introduced a new e-learning approach for practical based design subjects through the application of continual maker-based project (CoMB) to increase hands-on skill development in making prototypes among design students due to the challenges experienced by both lecturers & students, such as face-to-face monitoring, unconducive fabrication tools/workspace & limited resource of material.

What is the CoMB project?

As the process of building a tangible output of industrial design requires hands-on demonstration and monitoring, the continual maker-based project (CoMB) is to mitigate the challenges in doing practice-led assignments. At the same time, the attempts correspond to the blended online learning with novice design students located in different places with limitation factors. Several online platforms as the feeder of information using popular online communication apps of Whatsapp, social media (Youtube), online learning apps (Padlet Pro), and the UPM PutraBLAST system. These online platforms are an info structure of teaching and learning (TnL) to deliver interrelated learning content, progress tracking, monitoring of the learning process teaching, and learning evaluation. 

                                     Figure 1: Information structure of blended online teaching and learning (TnL)

OPERATIONAL DIGITAL ACTIVITIES OF COMB 

The instructions and the proposed workflow is to comply with the students’ home-based work environments, low access to resources for advanced material, and lacking experience in fabrication skills. The CoMB considered the limitations factor of making design models to ensure the workability of the continual maker-based project (CoMB) within the semester to suit student circumstances during the MCO. Therefore, the informative brief is carefully constructed to provide accessible digital material and technical information. Hence, the project complies with their limited resources of advanced material and fabrication techniques knowledge such as material (M), tools (T), procedure (P), and online info retrieval (IOR) (Figure 2). The provided informative online instruction objectively meets the requirements of digital integration with various student devices and easy-to-use technologies that they can easily reach. QR code and URL links are the primary tools to communicate between students and the source of references. 

                            Figure 2: CoMB project facilitate the educator for effective online practice-led assessment.

THE ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENT

Subsequently, their visual information processing ability and psychomotor skill improvisation were assessed at the end of the semester. Based on the rubric, visual assessment on uploaded pictorial evidence and audio-visual recorded video of every process of CoMB enable the assessor to evaluate the student’s psychomotor ability and output quality crucially. The results show that the operational intervention in digital technical practice made by the lecturer does help students form a contextual design fabrication and present multi-faceted creative results. The CoMB will strongly support the value of dynamic industrial design pedagogy linked with the advent of online teaching and digital learning tools. Eventually, this is to help the lecturers to conduct an online practice-led assessment that is so different from the average tangible evaluation in a workshop.

Dr. Siti Mastura Md Ishak   Senior Lecturer   Jabatan Reka Bentuk Perindustrian   Universiti Putra Malaysia

Date of Input: 11/05/2022 | Updated: 11/05/2022 | uswahhasanah