The first global virtual design education program to be run via the internet is now in its third month.
The Om'nium (latin for "all together") Virtual Design Studio (VDS) involves up to
50 design students from 12 countries situated throughout five continents.
The students are faced with briefs and lectures as in any design College but in collaboration
with students throughout the world.
The Om'nium VDS was initiated early in '99 by Australian University of New South Wales
Fine art lecturer Rick Bennett. He saw the project as more that just another distance learning
package - "It is a pilot study to explore a radical and future alternative for contemporary
tertiary design students. I'm very concious there are wonderful things going on in design at the moment and I'm quite conscious education is slipping more and more out of touch, in terms of keeping up
with technology, through budget cuts... this was a way of looking to the future
of how universities might have to start looking if they are to find a new way of
educating."
Once sponsorship was on board and key lecturers and tutors from design companies as diverse as Tomato and Antirom were involved, the project began to take shape in July of '99.
The 50 students currently participating in Om'nium are divided into ten groups with each
member of each group being geographically distanced. The students represent
twelve countries across five continents and together are tackling a common design
brief which sets a multi-disciplinary, conceptual design task.
The interface for the project is structured using a system of 'vsr's' (virtual studio rooms), 'easels' and 'walls' and these are supported by a series of 'message boards' and 'chat rooms.'
There are 5 vsr's within each group and these are the areas where students can work and can have their works viewed. They range from an area of total privacy for the individual group members through to an area where anybody via the www can view their work and leave comments. Within each 'vsr' area, there is one wall and numerous easels. It is the 'easels' which carry the students developmental work and the 'walls' where the groups can 'pin up' and view what they collectively have assembled.
Om'nium [vds] takes the view that "a university should adopt the role as a place of research, investigation and experimentation. in the same way that medicine is quite clearly and freely split between research and practice then so should the training and practice of designers."
Check out the Om'nium [vds] project atwww.omnium.unsw.edu.au
Read our interview with Rick Bennett