45. Collaborative Work in Design Education: Industry 4.0 Assisted Incubator for Creativity, Co-Learning, and Connectedness

Collaborative work is reported to be one of the key components that aid learning and creativity in design education. The design process itself involves interdisciplinary collaboration among individuals as well as between teams. More than a decade into industry 4.0, it seems relevant to investigate how senior school students receive and benefit from the recent exposure to design education. This paper spotlights the visible and perceived benefits of collaborative work in 9th graders, of five Indian Schools of Specialized Excellence (SoSE) in Delhi NCR, who underwent an 8-day design thinking workshop, created, and conducted by the Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Quantitative data was collected using Google Forms, and 293 responses to the questionnaire were received. The results strongly suggest the widespread influence of Industry 4.0 among 9th graders of Indian government schools and the positive impact of teamwork and collaboration in design creativity, learning, and connectedness among these students. Taking a deductive research approach, the study not only confirmed the benefits of collaborative work in learning and idea generation, but also highlights the students’ growth in terms of confidence and ability to make new friends, through an inductive approach. Further outreach and research opportunities are also suggested, considering this was the first-time that design education was being introduced to school students as an initiative by the local government.