The design field of landscape architecture has yet to witness the broad adoption of on-line education, despite multiple studies that have demonstrated the efficacy of online education in design fields, or distributed design education (DDE), in teaching design. While previous research has focused on the structural, institutional, social, and pedagogical aspects of DDE, little work has focused specifically on barriers to the adoption of DDE from a faculty perspective. This dissertation reports the results of a meta-synthesis of the current literature on DDE and a national Delphi study. A list of the identified constraints of DDE was created through the use of the meta-synthesis. This list of constraints was subsequently used in the creation of the Delphi study to identify the critical barriers to the adoption of online education in landscape architecture. There were 24 barriers assessed during the Delphi study, 7 of which were identified as critical barriers. Findings indicate that faculty remain skeptical of the precedents reported in the literature, do not receive adequate compensation for online course development, and have significant concerns about the ability of online education to replicate the social environment of the design studio. A comparison of the ranked barriers and the most commonly researched constraints suggests that the current research on DDE does not adequately address the concerns of faculty.
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