Situating my enquiry: teaching context, rationale & social justice
This action research project is grounded in my current role as a lecturer working fully within an online MA programme at the University of the Arts London. As all teaching, communication, and learning in new fully online postgraduate programme will take place through digital platforms, the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) has become the primary site through which students encounter the course. This shift has required a fundamental rethinking of how learning space is designed, experienced, and sustained.
In residential design education, the studio has traditionally functioned as a shared physical environment. Entering the studio offers a form of cognitive and social transition: students move into a space that supports focus, experimentation, and collective learning. In art and design education, the studio has traditionally functioned as a central pedagogical space. Orr and Shreeve (2017) describe studio learning as a signature pedagogy, shaped by immersion, dialogue, critique, and shared participation. Entering the studio offers a cognitive and social transition, allowing students to become absorbed in creative practice and collective learning. In contrast, online learning environments are inherently blended. Students often engage from bedrooms, kitchens, cafés, or shared spaces, where learning competes with everyday life. In this context, the studio becomes less a physical place and more a mindset that must be actively supported through structure, rhythm, and clarity. Without clear framing, opportunities for focus, experimentation, and belonging can be weakened.
This shift has significant implications for cognitive accessibility. When learning takes place across fragmented environments, the demands on attention, memory, and organisation increase. If digital course spaces are unclear, overly text-based, or poorly signposted, students must invest additional cognitive effort simply to orient themselves. Over time, this contributes to digital disadvantage; not limited to specific marginalised groups, but embedded within the structure of online education itself.
While students experience online learning differently depending on language background, neurodiversity, or personal circumstance, the issue is not solely individual. Digital platforms operate as a form of hidden curriculum, embedding assumptions about how learning should occur and who is able to navigate complexity with ease (Edwards, 2015; Öztok, 2019). When platforms prioritise linear navigation, dense information, and implicit logic, they tend to reward students with prior academic confidence while disadvantaging others. In this sense, digital disadvantage becomes systemic rather than exceptional.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) offers a framework for addressing these challenges by encouraging educators to design learning environments that anticipate learner variability rather than respond to difficulty after it arises (CAST, 2018). Principles such as clarity, consistency, and multiple modes of representation are particularly important in online contexts, where students cannot rely on physical cues, informal peer interaction, or shared studio presence. However, institutional VLEs such as Moodle also shape what is possible. While designed to support learning, they often prioritise administrative logic over learner experience, limiting how far pedagogical intentions can be realised. This tension between educational values and platform structures sits at the centre of my enquiry.
From an ethical perspective, this raises my key question: who carries responsibility for sustaining the studio mindset in online education?
When clarity is not embedded within course design, students must compensate through additional effort, peer-led workarounds, or repeated clarification. As Banks (2016) argues, ethical practice emerges through everyday professional decisions that shape care and fairness. This project represents the planning stage of my action research cycle (Kemmis and McTaggart, 1988). By examining cognitive accessibility as both a pedagogical and social justice concern, the enquiry seeks to support online learning environments that do not simply replicate residential models, but actively reimagine inclusive studio learning in digital form.
References
Banks, S. (2016) Everyday ethics in professional life. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
CAST (2018) Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Wakefield, MA: CAST.
Edwards, R. (2015) ‘Software and the hidden curriculum in digital education’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 23(2), pp. 265–279.
Kemmis, S. and McTaggart, R. (1988) The action research planner. Geelong: Deakin University.
Orr, S. and Shreeve, A. (2017) Art and design pedagogy in higher education: knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum. London: Routledge.
Öztok, M. (2019) The hidden curriculum of online learning. London: Routledge.