The role of active pedagogies in architectural design studios: post-pandemic adaptation

Abstract

Background: Architectural design studio courses are the core of architecture education where learners collaborate, brainstorm, and share their ideas to obtain the most beneficial outcome in a shared creative environment. The COVID-19 crisis has brought a variety of amendments in the architecture education world which therefore introduced a vast number of challenges to both architecture students and tutors. Since the beginning of 2020, all architecture universities from all over the world started to depend thoroughly on remote learning and according to previous studies, the majority of the students were highly satisfied with online learning when it came to architectural theoretical courses; however, the most challenging part was the architecture studio courses. Such interference lead to an educational shift from a physical interactive studio environment to a remote learning environment which caused a heated debate among the researchers. Hence, the study aims to test the architecture studio pedagogies in order to obtain an efficient and interactive studio environment leading to more satisfactory outcomes regarding the studio courses. Methods: Two questionnaire surveys were distributed online on google docs to both the studio courses staff members and students at the AAST Campus in Alexandria, Egypt at the end of the 15th week of the course and collected three weeks later. A comparative analysis of the individual and the collaborative phase for both surveys was anonymously achieved through the online forms for an unbiased active learning and pedagogical approaches assessment. Results: The survey results of 73 students and 13 staff participants emphasized the most beneficial active learning criteria and architecture pedagogies to be used for architectural studio courses. Conclusion: According to the results, the study will propose updated active learning guidelines for architectural design studio courses adapting to any emergency.