Doctoral Training Partnership (DTA - University of Strathclyde) | Brisco, Ross

This project is investigating students utilisation of social network sites for conducting design activities and supporting the design process, such as, to support the reasoning and discussion required to make design decisions. Social network sites offer functionality which meets the needs of computer-supported collaborative design systems, such as, in the exchange and ideas, artefacts and documents. The ubiquity of social network sites and integration with student’s life allows them access to conduct teamwork at all times of the day and the integration of mobile devices allow them access from anywhere. Our findings show that students utilise this ability throughout their daily lives such as, utilising spare time on public transport or whilst waiting in a line in a shop to check in on team progress or contribute to a discussion. The growth of social network sites within academia and enterprise suggest that students will need to utilise the technology in the future. With this, and social network sites ability to support the design process identified in this study, there is a need to investigate the requirement for new design education pedagogies to support students learning. It is important to reason how this might be delivered and how we might encourage the use of best practices when engaging with the technology.

This project aims to discover: How can distributed design teams utilise social network sites to meet the requirements of supporting engineering design projects? How are students in distributed engineering design team utilising social network sites to support their project work? What are the requirements for supporting engineering design team projects which utilise existing social network sites? Do existing social network sites meet the requirements of supporting engineering design projects? If not, how can they be met?