Staff Profiles

I'm an architect and have studied, lived and worked in South Africa, London and Sydney.

Since 2003 I have been also been teaching in design-related studios and programs at UNSW. I enjoy working across a number of faculties and across different teaching environments, as they provide me with a range of new and transferable set of skills. I consider these constantly evolving skills essential for the cross-disciplinary nature of the contemporary design workplace. 

I am currently the First Year Design Studio Coordinator and also teach in the Second Year Environments/Spatial Design Programs at the School of Design Studies. At COFA Online I teach the Spatial Design and Unravelling Urban Design courses. I am the professional development coordinator of online courses and programs at COFA Online.

My research reflects my varied interests and currently focuses on the shift to online and blended learning education, but more specifically the pedagogy that should – but often doesn’t - support this change. I have presented at numerous international conferences on subjects relating to the notions of trust in online environments; studio teaching; learning to teach online; strategies for implementing change towards blended learning practice; using multi-disciplinary practice in your teaching; encouraging social innovation and global citizenship in students; and preparing students for the global workplace.

I almost always work in collaborative team environments.

Recent Grants and Awards:

2011 ASCILITE Award for Innovation and Excellence (Simon McIntyre, Karin Watson) for the 'Learning to Teach Online' Project

2009 ALTC Competitive Research Grant for "Learning To Teach Online" (Simon McIntyre, Karin Watson) http://online.cofa.unsw.edu.au/learning-to-teach-online/ltto-episodes

2008 ALTC Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning to the FBEOutThere! Team  (Linda Corkery, Ann Quinlan, Ben Roche and Karin Watson) for "For commitment to a service-oriented approach to collaborative built environment design learning that connects community, students and university in mutually beneficial relationships." 

Recent Publications:

Optimising Studio Outcomes: Guidelines for Curriculum Development from the Australian Studio Teaching Project      (Zehner, R., Forsyth, G.,  de la Harpe, B., Peterson, F.,  Musgrave, E.,  Neale, D., and Frankham, F., with Wilson, S., and Watson, K). Paper presented at ConnectED 2010, 2nd International Conference on Design Education, Sydney, July 2010.

Trust and relationship building: critical skills for the future of design education in online contexts  (Watson, K., McIntyre, S., McArthur, I)  in Proceedings of ICOGRADA Education Network World Design Congress Education Conference, Central Academy of Fine ARts (CAFA), Beijing, China, 2009. Also published in Iridescent Icograda Journal of Design Research Volume 1 2009 - 2011 pg 22 - 29  http://toolkit.icograda.org/database/rte/files/PR_IridescentVol1_webres.pdf

Strategies for large scale blended learning initiatives: Training, teaching and management  (McIntyre, S., Watson, K., Larsen, S.) in Proceedings of Blended Learning Conference 2009, The University of Hertfordshire, UK, 2009

Curriculum Development in Studio Teaching Volume 4, STP Case Studies of Effective Practice       (Wilson, S., Watson, K (editors)) Sydney, Australia Learning and Teaching Council, (2009) www.studioteaching.org 

 'Designing 'in person' - locally and globally' (Watson, K., & Corkery, LF.)  In: Proceedings of 5th DEFSA International Conference. Design Education Forum of South Africa, Cape Town, 2007.

 Preparing students for the global workplace: An examination of collaborative online learning approaches (McIntyre, S., McArthur, I., Watson, K.) in Proceedings of ConnectEd Conference, International Conference on Design Education; Sydney, UNSW, 2007

Transforming Design Studio Learning and Teaching Through Real World, Interdisciplinary Projects (Corkery, LF., Roche, B., Watson, K. & Zehner, RB.) In: Proceedings of ConnectED 2007 International Conference on Design Education. Sydney, UNSW, 2007.

For more information about Karin:

http://unsw.academia.edu/KarinThieleWatson

http://au.linkedin.com/pub/karinthiele-watson/15/998/256