The teachers and students of the Department of Industrial Design of the Tsinghua Academy of Arts & Design have overcome the practical difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to constantly explore on the cloud platform, create a new online model of knowledge, train the students' expert mind, enhance the awareness of copyright protection in online teaching, and hand in a "cloud answer sheet" full of imagination.

Basics of 3-D Modeling (2)

Instructor: Liu Xin

Time: 8:00-11:30, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

Target students: 2019 undergraduates of the Department of Industrial Design

"The students' final result reports have gone beyond my expectation, as most of the students have perfectly accomplished the course goal. Some of the students are very outstanding and have a great sense of achievement themselves. Meanwhile, their confidence in future study has been enhanced." Upon the completion of the course, A/Prof. Liu Xin fully affirmed the students' achievements in online learning.

A/Prof. Liu Xin's online classroom facilities

The topic-based training of the course is the most important. A/Prof. Liu Xin asked the students to study and extract animal features and conduct abstract shape design training, and create abstract animal shapes by using any materials available to them, such as iron wires, plastic bottles and cans; and to find abstract and generalized modeling language to express animal forms and their own feelings.

In traditional classrooms, tools and materials are all prepared in advance. The teacher will explore the design process of three-dimensional forms together with the students and sometimes demonstrate the operation. But now the teacher has to make a lot of compromises because he can only use verbal language as much as possible and demonstrate the process to the students with simple tools and materials.

Students' online reporting

In practice, A/Prof. Liu Xin told the students that they should achieve the same effect and standard as normal courses, so as to stimulate everyone's initiative for learning.

Students' project presentation

To ensure the quality of online teaching, A/Prof. Liu Xin set goals of different stages for his students, requiring them to report online every morning. Discovering that offline Q & A was very effective, he specially strengthened this part. The first minor assignment by A/Prof. Liu Xin was to ask the teacher questions addressing the knowledge taught. As a result, the students put forward many valuable common problems. A/Prof. Liu Xin answered every question in the next class.

Group photo of the course

A/Prof. Liu Xin has frankly said that on the whole online teaching have even more advantages than offline teaching in imparting knowledge. However, as teachers and students cannot discuss face to face, the tutoring and interactive part when making models by hands cannot be carried out smoothly.

History and Theory of Design Research

Instructor: Cai Jun

Time: 13:30-17:00, Wednesday

Target students: Doctoral and master degree candidates from the Academy of Arts & Design

"Everyone listens carefully in online lessons. Teachers also try their best to use online resources to share relevant information with students. I think courseware in online lessons is much better than the traditional classroom." In Prof. Cai Jun's cloud-based teaching, the excellent classroom atmosphere and the expansion of teaching resources have become the highlights of this special teaching experience.

Prof. Cai Jun teaching

After repeated tests and use of the online teaching platform, Prof. Cai Jun occasionally had some questions. For example, could the courseware uploaded to the online platform be read by students in this class only or students taking other courses as well? Under the network environment, how should we protect the intellectual copyright of the contents of online classroom teaching?

The photo of Prof. Cai Jun teaching

Prof. Cai Jun affirmed the effective improvement of classroom efficiency by cloud-based teaching, while deeply reflecting on this teaching mode, which relies on online live broadcast platforms. Many of the lectures given by teachers in the Academy of Arts & Design are teachers' own creations or solutions that guide students to discuss, which are characterized by teachers' personal innovation. Although they have not published papers or applied for patents for these lectures, teachers wish that such results be protected in time.

Besides, Prof. Cai Jun also tried to solve the difficulties in online teaching. He preferred to discuss directly with his students through video, asking them to turn on their camera when discussing. Prof. Cai noted that students' question answering via video was not as effectual as face-to-face group discussions.

Prof. Cai Jun's lecture

Online teaching

In Cai Jun's opinion, the best advantage of online teaching is that the network platforms can be fully used to share videos, bring in experts, and the course contents can be flexibly mobilized.

Prof. Cai Jun invited postdoctoral students from Australia and Finland to the online class to introduce their current study and research abroad. They brought rich information to the students and communicated with them online in real time. This method is far from being possible in the traditional classroom.

"Display Design (1)"

Instructor: Fan Yinliang

Time: 8:00-11:30, Monday and Wednesday

Target students: 2017 undergraduates of the Department of Industrial Design

This course, as a professional course for the major of Display Design, aims to cultivate students' design thinking, planning ability, and design expression ability, etc., with a special emphasis on the relationship between "details" and "parts" in design.

To ensure the quality of online teaching, A/Prof. Fan Yinliang chose a two-platform model with "Rain Classroom +Tencent Conference". On the one hand, in-class teaching of design and art majors have certain associative abstract thinking and leaping innovative thinking, which require real-time interaction with students; On the other hand, there is a great demand for discussion and interaction in the specialized courses of design.

Many online tests of "Rain Classroom +Tencent Conference"

During this special period of teaching, to enrich the teaching contents, A/Prof. Fan Yinliang designed the "social thinking link". Two interactive "games" were designed in combination with the content during teaching. In the first game, "paper plane", the students felt the importance of "structure" and "details" intuitively through the 5-minute production and test flight of "paper planes".

Given limited materials and space, the students made "paper planes" in their own homes and carried out flight tests, reaching the conclusion that the details of the design determine its success or failure.

The 5-minute production and test flight of "paper planes"

The other "game" was to design a jewelry display cabinet in 20 minutes. Through the "small design", students realized that, the essence of design is not the design of modeling and appearance, but more attention should be paid to the exploration of "challenges" of design and the ability to solve such "challenges" and problems.

Wang Zhengqi's presentation of his design scheme (in Wuhan)

An Dong sharing her design scheme

Ou Zongjing sharing his design scheme

In practice, A/Prof. Fan Yinliang is more inclined to adopt a teaching mode with more interactions, believing that online teaching should be more interesting and the distance between the teacher and students should be shortened as much as possible, while more time should be allocated to students' active explanation and sharing of their schemes. In addition, due to the relatively small number of students in a class in the Academy of Arts & Design, A/Prof. Fan Yinliang suggested that some 1-to-1 interactions be adopted to increase the attention paid to lectures.

Source: Department of Industrial Design

Writer: Wu Shanwei

Editor: Zhao Ruohan

Graphic Designer: Feng Jiaqi