Barriers to the Adoption of Online Design Education within Collegiate Landscape Architecture Programmes in North America

Abstract

The field of landscape architecture has yet to see the broad adoption of online education, and it is theorised that this is because of a failure to adequately address the concerns of faculty. This paper reports the results of a Delphi study that identified the critical barriers holding back landscape architecture faculty in North America from adopting online education. The findings indicate that faculty are most concerned about how the social component of traditional studio learning can be translated to an online environment. Faculty are also sceptical about the lack of precedents and believe they do not receive adequate compensation for online teaching. The study’s findings suggest that previous research with online education in design fields has failed to address many of the primary barriers faculty identified, which may mean a reorientation of the research agenda is necessary.