This paper reports on a qualitative case study exploring design student reflections about their experiences of a transdisciplinary online collaboration in a real-world learning project implemented in October 2020. The spread of a global pandemic that caused a primary and rapid shift from a contact-based learning model to fully fledged online teaching marked the year and learning for student participants. Applying an interpretivist paradigm, the researchers thematically analysed reflection essays from a sample of thirty-two design students to expose dominant perceptions.

Using social constructivism and online collaborative learning theory (OCL) as a conceptual framework, the authors highlight the authentic learning experienced by design students and the newfound insights of these students about sharing ideas in an online collaborative model. OCL builds upon three phases of knowledge construction, namely idea generation, idea organisation, and intellectual convergence to facilitate authentic learning. In this scenario, teams composed of final-year students (of which most were previously unknown) from the design, copywriting, and strategy disciplines met online daily for four weeks to develop and design original and meaningful strategic and creative solutions for challenges in South African business and society. The brief stipulated students should author reflective essays about their collaborative learning experiences on completion of the project.

Using innovative technologies combined with the present challenging socio-economic conditions suggests that online collaboration will become more prevalent in the learning and working world of design students and graduates. The authors posit that as design student learning grows beyond the initial novel sense of participating in transdisciplinary online collaboration on real-world challenges, they will find increasingly meaningful connections with their own personal lived experiences. Insights in these connections may assist researchers and educators towards a better understanding of how to design projects and facilitate authentic social interactions and learning in transdisciplinary student collaborations.