Design patterns for cross-cultural computer-supported collaboration

Design patterns for cross-cultural computer-supported collaboration

• Schadewitz, Nicole

2008

• F Learning & Teaching
  • FD Application of Communicative Media, IT in Learning & Teaching
• G Curriculum, Teaching & Learning: Specific Disciplines
  • GF Humanities & Arts

Art Education Design Educational Technology

• Hong Kong
• Korea
• Austria
• Taiwan

• 1997.7 onwards

• Post-Secondary Education

Collaboration in design has become a geographically distributed and culturally dispersed activity. Increasingly, design educators see the need to prepare young designers for an international market by providing students with skills not only for design but also for intercultural communication.
This thesis investigates how design patterns for facilitating intercultural design education contexts can be identified through qualitative and comparative analysis of a long-term ethnographic study of cross-cultural computer-supported collaborative design learning. The core findings of this research are based on a three-year ethnographic study of intercultural computer-supported collaboration between groups of students from Hong Kong, Korea, Austria and Taiwan. A qualitative research approach was utilized for the discovery of regularities in the observed collaborations, and a comparative research approach was employed to discover similarities and differences across cultural contexts. Data from the first year was analyzed inductively to identify reoccurring themes in design collaboration. This guided the observation of collocated activity and analysis of online conversations in the second year of this study. A map of recurring design solutions was constructed from this analysis. Eleven design patterns were written based on this analysis and presented to designers for evaluation in a pattern workshop. Based on the feedback from this workshop, in the third year of this study an in-depth analysis of computer-mediated interaction between Hong Kong and Korean students, and their local tutors, was carried out. A deductive coding scheme, informed by theories of intercultural and cross-cultural communication research, was employed to guide the analysis and articulation of design patterns for intercultural collaboration.
Within this research, an inductive and deductive methodology for identifying and articulating design patterns was developed. Therein, eleven patterns for intercultural computer-supported collaboration in Hong Kong/Korean design-learning teams were identified and written. In an ensuing cross-cultural comparative analysis those patterns were evaluated in terms of their occurrence and applicability across different national contexts. In the comparison of collaboration between Hong Kong students and those from Korea, Austria and Taiwan, the validity of the majority of the proposed design patterns could be defined for collectivist community and hierarchical authority oriented cultures such as Korea or Taiwan. In addition, some design patterns with an extended validity could be detected through this comparison.

PhD

Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Hong Kong

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-12, Section: A, page: 4549

• English

Dissertation Theses

• 9780549963271

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/en/bibs/f8317403

2010-12-16