contribute from their particular domain expertise at
the authors’ department, the skills to organise such a
moments when they have the knowledge required
project are practiced in a multi-disciplinary design
(see Figure 2). The latter model is observed more in
project in the third year of the Bachelor’s programme.
However, as noted before, Collaborative design is
more than working together in the sense of coopera t-ing with individual tasks in such a project. Both or-
ganis ational and technological issues are involved when a team needs to collaborate, particularly when collaboration takes place on distance. Questions that
arise are: how do you organise a design meeting; what is the team members’ organisational role as op-posed to their professional role; which techniques can
be used to enhance creativity in the group; how will
we communicate on distance with respect to verbal
Figure 1. Loosely coupled design process.
and graphical communication; what about asynchro-
nous communication? The Master of Science course
‘Collaborative Design’ developed by the authors,
In the course presented in this paper, we stress
aims to teach these skills and to provide students with
that participants of collaborative design sessions in a
insight and knowledge in the particular complexities
multi-disciplinary team will make their own design
of (distant) collaboration in multi-disciplinary design
thinking transparent and are able to listen with inter-
est and respect to each other. They are willing to learn from each other and realise that only in this way
4.1 MSc Course on Collaborative Design
a good and integrated design result can be achieved.
The organisation of the design process is crucial here,
The objectives of this course at Eindhoven Un i-
especially when designers need to work on distance.
versity of Technology are to gain insight in the prob-
They will make use of organisational instruments,
lem domain of collaborative design and to get to
such as meetings and scheduled tasks, as well as ICT
know the possibilities of methods and techniques to
tools for both synchronous and asynchronous com-
approach this problem domain. Methods and tech-
niques concern both organisational instruments and
ICT related tools. Specific competences that are ac-quired through this course are the following. • To play an organisational role in a team-working
project. This involves being able to identify so-cial and organisational roles people play in teams and becoming aware of one’s own role as as-sumed and as required.
• To play a professional role in a multi-disciplinary
Figure 2. Closely coupled desig n process.
design process. Here the focus is on the activities
and responsibilities of the students from the viewpoint of their respective expertise and spe-cialis ation.
• To work together in a design team. The critical
issues here are the creativity in the team and the
students’ contribution to the creative process. An important aspect is for students to realise that
In educational master programmes on architecture
creativity in a team of designers and engineers
and engineering, initially students often work alone
must pass the boundaries of individual disci-
on assignments, the results of which they discuss with
plines; taking one another’s viewpoints is essen-
their supervisor. When teamwork comes into play,
• To be able to use, asses s, and select relevant ICT
students have to organise their activities and make a
tools for face-to-face as well as distant, and syn-
project plan. They have to find answers to questions
chronous as well as asynchronous communica-
such as: what are the general objective and problem;
tion to support progress in the design pro cesses.
what is the approach followed; what is the planning;
• To reflect on the work of the team and on the
who does what; which results are expected when? At
student’s individual contribution. The key to re-
flection is the student’s awareness of the overall
for the building object described in the brief from
process as well as the individual activities and
task 2. The virtual meetings take place through
the roles and actions that the student has taken
synchronous communication using a selection of
The educational approach chosen in this course
4. Designing in a distributed organisation. For this
task, a re-organisation of the teams takes place.
can be indicated as ‘experiential learning.’ This
The various multi-disciplinary teams are re-
means that students acts as active learners while the
organised into mono-disciplinary teams that rep-
teacher’s coaching role is focused on observing stu-
resent each of the construction-related disci-
plines. While the students keep their original pro-
According to the American Institute for Experien-
fessional role, they are now teamed up with
tial Learning [5], this educational concept is com-
others that have the same role. Together these
posed of three components: knowledge, activity and
teams form an organisation of multiple profes-
sional disciplines (see Figure 5). The organis a-tion’s task is to agree on the final design of the
The activities in the course were organised into
building object, based on the designs previously
five assignments, of which two were individual as-
made in task 3. The choice for a face-to-face or
signments and three were group assigned design
virtual meeting is open. The organisation as a
whole has to deliver one final plan for the build-
1. Literature review. Each student prepares a sum-
mary and short presentation of a review of two scientific papers on the topic of collaborative de-sign.
2. Designing in a team. In this task the student is
member of a multi-disciplinary team. Within each of the six teams, students represent various construction-related professions, such as archi-tect, structural engineer, contractor, principal, HVAC consultant, etc. (see Figure 3). The team designs the function of a building object in one or two face-to-face meetings. The result is a de-sign brief.
Figure 5. Task 4: Design in a distributed organis ation
5. Individual final report. Every student writes a re-
port on his/her experiences with the course, de-
Figure 3. Task 2: Design in a multi-d isciplinary team
scribing what he/she has learned and providing
an evaluation of the ICT -tools that were used.
3. Designing in a distributed team. The same multi-
The three team assignments were imp ortant in the
disciplinary team now works on distance and or-
course, but mainly as a way for students to gain
ganises virtual meetings to design a spatial layout
e xperiences. For this purpose, the team sessions were not tutored. The way the teams addressed the orga-
nisational problems was completely left open. Lec-turers would not actively involve themselves in the teams’ functioning, but could be consulted at any
The individual final report formed the sole basis
for the final assessments of the student’s work in the
course. This made it possible for students to experi-ment in the teams, while at the same time removed
the mutual dependencies of students to successfully
Figure 4. Task 3: Design in a mult i-disciplinary team
conclude the course. The team was allowed to fail:
through online meetings and distributed work.
individual students were assessed by their perception
of the process and the personal actions manifested
All participating students own a notebook com-
puter with software that is relevant and required for
their study. The university campus, including many
The student workload of this course is 84 hours, cor-
student residences, provides internet access, partially
responding to three ECTS (European Credit Transfer
System). The course is described on the website and
While the observed process can be represented by
includes all necessary information about objectives,
the schema in Figure 6, which is a modified version
tasks, literature, time planning, relevant web links,
from [4], an additional activ ity was inserted in the
requirements for deliverables, presentations, lecture
schema to represent the synchronous communication
notes, reflection criteria, etc. [6]. Students’ contribu-
that takes place while team members work individu-
tions and the results of activities in the three design
tasks were submitted through a Project website.
Apart from the assignments and the plenary dis-
cussions of the progress of the teamwork, the course included interactive lectures on the following four
4.2.1 Organisational and social aspects of design-
In these lectures, the objective was to make students aware of the many social aspects to collaboration,
such as the need for mutual acceptation, openness, commit ment to shared goals, shared responsibilities, etc. Becoming aware of the roles people can play in a
team was an important issue. Students were asked to identify their own role according to the test developed by Belbin [7,8]. In this test, team roles are distin-
guished in three categories: action-oriented roles, people-oriented roles and cerebral roles.
Students found it useful to become aware of their
own natural role in a team. It allows them to recog-nise their own behaviour, to take advantage of their
natural strengths, and to be conscious with their natu-
Another kind of role is the professional role that
students play in the team. As the students have differ-
4.2.3 Organising and managing the design pro cess
ent backgrounds, the teams were multi-disciplinary
Apart from the group-level aspects of collaborative
teams. The multi-disciplinary design tasks allowed
design, the course also addressed the issues of how to
the students to play their professional role and experi-
manage design processes and what kind of informa-
ence how the nature of this role has an influence on
tion environment organisations can deploy in design
their behaviour and in the relation with the other team
and construction projects. The potential of pro ject
websites was discussed with particular interest in the
business implementation issues. The way that an or-
4.2.2 The use of ICT tools for collaborative design
ganisation is adjusted to new tools and the drive to
Besides email and instant messaging tools that stu-
stimulate co-workers to accept them are of crucial
dents are already accustomed to, the ICT tools that
importance for successful application of tools that are
were mainly used in this course are Netmeeting (M i-
allowed to play such a central role in a company’s
crosoft), Architectural Studio (AutoDesk), and the
Project website programme Automanager Meridan (Cyco Soft ware).
4.2.4 Collaborative design in practice
• Their course is focused more on technical aspect
Practical experiences on Collaborative design were
of the distant collaboration and not so much on
presented in the course by guest-lecture of the central
• In the course by O’Brien, the personal reflection
process owner of a national governmental organis a-
is an informal document, whereas in the author’s
tion with regional agencies on recently gained experi-
course the student’s individual reflection is the
ences of implementations and use of a distributed
project website in the agency’s daily practice on con-struction project management.
The course was taught in 2003 and in 2004. To be able to assess and improve the course it was neces-
sary to evaluate both content and format. The type of questions that an evaluation of the course should pro-vide an answer to were: • Is the educational approach effective and do stu-
Figure 7. Students collaborating on distance.
dents actually acquire the targeted comp etences?
• To what degree have students been able to de-
velop themselves with respect to the domain of collaborative design?
• Have they acquired sufficient skills using the
A course that is similar to the one described here is
• Are students capable of using the tools on their
taught at the University of Florida and the University
• Have the students been able to integrate the or-
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This course is
ganis ational and technological skills in their
called Collaborative Design Processes (CPD).
O’Brien et al. describe the intention and organisation
of the course and their experiences with it [9].
Answers to these questions have been obtained in
two ways. First, the individual reports of the students
1. To understand the group dynamics and to de-
contained information regarding their personal reflec-
velop negotiation and decision making skills through direct experience of group design work
tion and learning experiences. Second, a formal
and through critical reflections, evaluation and
evaluation was carried out in 2003 and 2004 by the
analyses of multidisciplinary, net-based collabo-
department’s educational support section.
In the students’ reports, we extracted information
2. To complete a facility design including a plan,
regarding the collaboration process during the three
schedule, budget, and structure using different
design assignments, analysis of these pro cesses in
work processes enabled by the use of information
terms of activities, roles, and tasks, and their experi-
ences in participating in the design team using organ-
3. To learn how to evaluate and integrate technolo-
gies of multi-disciplinary remote collaboration in
isational instruments as well as ICT tools.
The formal evaluation was carried out by a de-
4. To design improved work process methods and
partmental evaluation officer in the form of a written
to make recommendations for the development
enquiry among all participating students. The results
of improved software tools for collaborative,
of this enquiry give insight in the perceived relevance
of the course objectives, the quality of the course and
the assignments, the time spent by students, the learn-
The main differences with the course described in
this paper are: • The course by O’Brien involves a higher level of
detail of the required end-results from the design
The main conclusions from the evaluation based on
Their course is based on Bricsnet’s Project Ce n-ter rather than Automanager Meridian and Auto-
the individual reports by the students are:
• Most students were aware of having experienced
different organisation of design processes as well
as using different organisational instruments and
are traditionally trained in cooperation and coordina-
tion. Much effort is needed to convey the notion of
• Working in a team of people previously un-
collaboration in different settings specifically distant
known to each other has a significant and pos i-
collaboration. Experiential learning is a very good
tive influence on the learning experience.
way for students to learn the need for, e.g., organising
Students were actively aware of the roles they played in the team; this concerned both the role
effective collaboration processes. Providing students
as a team member (e.g. according to Belbin) and
with theory and examples, and also discussing such
the professional role in a multi-disciplinary team.
issues in groups, does not lead to the same effective-
• It appeared difficult to be aware of, or even to
play, both types of role at the same time.
Future development for course improvement will
• Playing the professional role is difficult because
focus on redesigning tasks and probably adding
of the unrealistic setting in an educational pro-
smaller exercises as well as exercises focused on ef-
fective use of ICT tools for distance collaboration.
Organisation of the collaboration is crucial for
Adding smaller exercises will focus on a more limited
number of aspects of collaborative design. For exa m-
Reflection is the most difficult part of the experi-ential learning format that was applied in this
ple, separating the focus on organisational roles from
course. A reason might be that students don’t
that on professional roles is preferable in early exe r-
have much experiences with this instrument.
cises. They can be combined in later exercises or as-
• Sufficient skills with ICT tools are necessary:
signments. This is likely to increase the awareness of
lack of skills will frustrate the collaboration
the differences and the influences on students’ behav-
• Physical distance is necessary to enforce distant
While experiential learning was successful, the ef-
collaboration (if they can easily walk and meet,
fect can probably be increased by informing students
about the approach and the expected effect.
Conclusions derived of the formal evaluation: • Reflection is an effective instrument to finalise
such a course. It helps to intensify the learning
• Students appreciate the combination of social and
[1] Harris, F. and R. McCaffer. 2001. Modern Con-
technical aspects of the course: 50% of the stu-
struction Management. Blackwell Science.
dents appreciate the balance between technical
[2] Schaefer, W.F., 2004. To image & to Control . In-
a n d social/organisational issues in the course.
auguration lecture, TU/e, The Netherlands.
25% find the course too social, 25% find it too
[3] Gassel, Frans van, Ger Maas, 2001. International
technical. Around 50% of the students find the
Status Report on Aspects of Future Sites. CIB TG27
combination of these issues the most interesting aspect of the course.
“Human-Machine Technologies for Constru ction
• Students appreciate the completeness of the
[4] Kvan T. 2000. Collaborative design: what is it?
• Students rated this course by 3.5 (was 4.2 in
Automation in Construction, 9(4) 400-415. Source: http://slimmerontwerpen.nl/Documenten%20Slimmerontwerpen/Paper%20FvGasselISARC2004.PDF
British Columbia Reproductive Care Program Newborn Guideline 11 EYE CARE AND PREVENTION OF OPHTHALMIA NEONATORUM INTRODUCTION Ophthalmia neonatorum presents as an inflammation of the conjunctiva in an infant younger than 30 days of age.1 Most ophthalmia infections in the neonatal period are acquired during vaginal delivery and reflect the sexually transmitted diseases
Compassionate Bob Leibowitz, M.D. Onclogy Medical Group DIPLOMATE AMERICAN BOARDS OF INTERNATIONAL MEDICINE ANTIANGIOGENER COCKTAIL (AAC) Wir haben eine sehr effektive Behandlungsoption, die weder eine Chemotherapie ist, auch keine Hormonblockade darstellt und dabei das Immunsystem stärkt. Ist es nicht genau das, was Sie immer gesucht haben? Der Name dieser Form der Behandlung