The Impact of a Connectivist Learning Environment on Indonesian Design Students’ Learning Experiences Through MOOC

This study sought to investigate the impact of Connectivism on design education; specifically for Project Managerial Class for undergraduate design students in Indonesia. Research has shown that design students need to have critical thinking skills and graduate with useful life skill sets, which can increase their employability, especially in post-pandemic situations. As such, this study used a mixed-method research design to investigate the development of effective learning content guided by Connectivism and assessed using the Revised Community of Inquiry (RCOI) theoretical framework. Forty-nine design students in an Indonesian University took part in this study. A 7-point Likert scale questionnaire was administered to them to gauge their attitudes and perceptions toward four elements of the RCOI, namely Cognitive Presence, Social Presence, Teaching Presence, and Learner Presence. This study also investigated to what extent Connectivism can be applied to the design learning process and how it can be explored to create an engaging learning experience for design students. Findings from the study show that students were very positive toward these four elements of the RCOI within a Connectivist learning environment. These results strongly encourage the use of Connectivism’s social characteristics in the design learning process during the rapidly emerging digital era.