Pilot integrating visual platform in online courses

Being able to share visual course assignments and provide and receive personal feedback is essential in most studio design courses of Delft University of Technology. With the rapid growth of online and blended education teachers are confronted with the challenge of maintaining the same quality for this aspect of their teaching as in traditional face-to-face design courses. Looking for interactive ways to train creative skills in their courses, teachers found that the available WEB 2.0 tools were unsatisfactory. We mapped the requirements and found that Sketchdrive, a platform for sharing visuals, seemed to meet many of these requirements. We developed a course design integrating the visual platform Sketchdrive and collaborated with Sketchdrive to improve the platform. This resulted in a pilot project, including 3 MOOCs and 2 campus courses. This paper elaborates on the pilot project. We show how the visual platform is integrated into course designs. Next, we compare student and teacher experiences based on the results of surveys and interviews. Furthermore, we discuss differences in the blended campus courses and the online courses. In conclusion, we consider what still needs to be improved for better aligning the visual platform to our course designs. Finally, based on lessons learnt, we provide recommendations for integrating visual platforms in the course design of higher education studio design courses.