Developing Basic Graphic Tools for Experiencing Design Foundation in On-Line Education

Abstract: Since design education has adopted new online technologies, design education programs have been confronted with a new situation. New technologies have forced change to the design environment and as a result continues to construct a new paradigm. A few online education design classes have been available in some colleges but they only focus on the development of technical and practical skills for digital media. This is due to the difficulty of indirectly learning the design foundations. The development of personal computers and the Internet led to changes of instructor-student and student-student relationships in design education. New resources of design education with proper materials and tools have to be offered for teaching and learning. Because of the characteristics of online education, materials and tools must be digitalized for transferring data and uploading from the Internet for running with a web browser. Basic graphic tools on screen are needed for the students to experience design principles and to improve their design perspective. The tools were developed in two ways; one (A type), for practicing fundamental shapes by transforming as dots, lines, planes and a combination of the three, and the other (B type), for practicing types including the English alphabet, numbers and dingbats. Students were given certain design requirements to explore Basic Graphic Tools and a learning guide/performance test after the lecture to evaluate the tools. This research has presented some encouraging results and raises questions toward future work: how do BGTs impact the feasibility of an online design lecture