Due to the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic, students from all over the world have been forced to continue their education on confinement, adapting their domestic spaces as classrooms and relying on technology and the use of online tools that allow them to access all kind of content sources. Since the first trimester of 2020, some e-learning platforms have gained international relevance for their educational use, especially the ones focused on Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Virtual Learning Environments (VLE).

The following study focuses on the teaching of Interior Design courses for 7 to 9th grade students from México city, but the same approach and results can be transferred to most of the countries that have faced school confinement.

The first approach was to understand the limitations that these students have endured and faced from the beginning of this pandemic, because most of them relied on the equipment provided by their educational institutions for their academic formation. The majority of these students only had access to mid-range equipment, and that meant that they weren’t able to run the specialized CAD software available for them in the market. Another factor to consider was the compatibility between the student´s, teacher´s and staff´s equipment, since there is a vast supply of brands and computer equipment in the market, and at the beginning of the pandemic there was no control over who was working with Mac Os, Windows or linux, and even worse, some of them had to use their smart phones or tablets to take their online lessons, and that meant IOS and Android were also added to the equation.

The objective of this research is to proof the great advantage of online CAD applications for the teaching of Interior Design during the confinement.

The methodology applied for analyzing the results of this study, is based on first stablishing clear evaluation criterions applied to different levels of achievement and obtaining the expected knowledge stablished by the Mexican public education system (SEP for its initials in Spanish). It is important to mention that this type of courses belong to the area of “Technology Studies”, that are part of the overall school curriculum and that, even though they were not designed to be taught using online platforms, the expected knowledge the student must obtain by the end of the school year remains the same, despite the confinement.

So, at the beginning of the school year, we had to define, what was the main core of this expected knowledge, to adapt the exercises and contents of the courses to an online version, considering the use of this online applications from the very beginning.

To define the applications that were going to be used on the courses, we made a comparison chart, between the most recommended online 3D apps, that complied with all the characteristics mentioned before, and that were adequate for Interior Design remote teaching.

Once the applications were chosen (with alternatives due to compatibility issues), we proceeded to write the overall Unit planners, and to design exercises and practices based on the SEP curriculum, but also integrating the International Baccalaureate (IB) philosophy that the analyzed institution has adapted.

The use of the chosen apps was defined mainly by the school grade they were applied, and that resulted that 7^th grade students started using the 3D apps later on the school calendar than the 8^th and 9^th graders.

The results were based on the projects that were delivered but also on the students’ answers to a satisfaction survey that was applied to them.

The results are divided in three main areas:

• User experience. In this point was valued the usability of the apps, the preference of use (over handmade projects) and the frequency of use.
• Acquisition of expected knowledge. As it was mentioned, the students are expected to acquire very specific knowledge, so the projects delivered are compared to the criterions (SEP and IB) that were defined at the beginning of the school year.
• Quality of the projects. It is taken in consideration if the proposal fulfills its design purpose, if it is easy to understand, if it is aesthetically pleasing and if it is appropriate for the use it is designed, and of course, if it is an original project.

The students’ projects, that were delivered during this school year, clearly show their ability to understand the basic Interior Design concepts and to apply them into functional and complete design proposals, but must of all, they show the advantage of using these online tools. Students are naturally drawn into this apps and show a genuine interest on applying their design knowledge into their projects, and there is a clear design improvement in the transition between handmade and computer aided proposals.

Students are more motivated to create their spaces with the aid of this apps, they even show a clearer understanding of the concepts and put them into practice faster than they did with handmade projects.

To finish this abstract, I want to share a conclusion. We are living in times of change, and we cannot keep doing the same educational practice we did 20 years ago. Technology has advanced to the point that we can make a complete project in very little time, with great quality and at a very low cost. We can not longer hold on to the romantic idea that students must learn to do all things by hand before using computers. The reality tells us that the new generations have unlimited access to knowledge and contents like we never did before, and it is all on the palm of their hand, so it is very naïve to say that they will not use it for their professional advantage. However, that does not mean that the basic concepts must be forgotten, it only means that we must adapt our teaching methods and take advantage of all these technological wonders we have at hand.