A Study on the Objectives of Communication Design Education for Generation Z



Choi, A. Y. (2015). A Study on the Objectives of Communication Design Education for Generation Z. Journal of the Korean Society of Design Culture, 21-3, 675-683.

Korean Society of Design Culture (KSDC)


Abstract

When society changed with time, the design changed with it, and the design education developed its needs. Generation Z (birth after the 2000s) has unique characteristics from previous generations. Gen Z experienced the first information technology at a young age. Thus they are easy to adopt the new technology and can organize meaningful information that leads to having faster learning ability. Also, Gen Z actively uses social media as their lifestyle that they can communicate at least two languages fluently and they can locate their job placements worldwide.

The first group of Gen Z will be entered the University in the year 2019, and this research is a preparation for it. The goal of the education for Gen Z is the help they can find their career field according to their abilities and find their lifelong career path within the same career field. Therefore, this research aims to find the objectives of Communication Design education and propose it.

First, the researcher studied today’s Communication Design education in the function and attributions of education conjunction with the unique characteristics of Gen Z. With research findings, the study continued with a survey. It surveyed about 100 university educators and designers with at least ten years’ experience in the Communication Design field and carefully selected the best 60 surveys to analyze its result. Through 13 questions, the researcher proposed that Education-Research-Industry based education and global integration education with live project networks can benefit educating the Gen Z students. Therefore, the researcher organized the objectives of education by analyzing Individual Factors, Society Factors, and Total Factors.

We need to formalize a new design education system based on the latest technology and society, and we need to de-emphasize the Bauhaus education system. Making new approaches with the unpredictable result are hard, but we need to continue our study for increasing our new labor force and its effective education system. This study can benefit and initiate its development. 


Keywords: Communication Design, Design Education, Generation Z, Objectives of Education


This study surveyed 60 professionals and educators in the world who play an essential role in the current design education and design working environment to study the general educational goals of communications design studies. The results of the survey were analyzed as follows.