Xiaojuan Hui, Xiaochun Chen

Xiaochun Chen

June 30, 2026

Curriculum reform, AIGC, Environmental design education, Applied undergraduate program, Curriculum reconstruction.

Generative artificial intelligence has begun to fundamentally reshape the visual production workflow of design majors, but the systematic response of undergraduate design courses is relatively lagging behind. This article records the complete reform cycle of the "Environmental Design Practice" course (course number 2040236) at Tianjin Renai College from 2024-2025 to 2025-2026. This reform replaced the original three module structure with a dual module framework with AIGC as the core, eliminated the content overlap with the parallel studio courses, established a clear connection between the output and input of the two modules, and took the ideological and political design of the curriculum as an internal dimension rather than an external supplement. The paper is based on teaching syllabus documents, teaching logs, and teaching reflections, analyzing the theoretical basis and core decision-making logic of the reform, as well as the practical challenges encountered in a rapidly iterating environment without textbooks to rely on and tool ecology. This article argues that "principled curriculum reconstruction rather than simple tool stacking" is an appropriate institutional response for designing education to address the challenges of AIGC.

© 2026, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license