Adaptation of architectural education pedagogy in addressing COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) proclaimed the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic. As a result, it has been mandated that all educational institutions complete the 2019-20 spring semester online. Despite the importance of distance education, it appears that online education has not assisted architecture education adequately. This is due to the fact that it has higher learning objectives, is taught via coaching approaches, and incorporates nonverbal communication. Architects are trained through a method focused on the ‘studio course’. In this environment, students’ decisions are unintentionally affected by the unanticipated backtalk and discussions that arise from the design development process. In other words, criticism, which is a graphic and oral communication between the students and the instructor, is one of the most frequent learning strategies utilized in the design studio. The necessity for new educational frameworks in architecture has been sparked by the pedagogically distinctive consequences of digital design. Thus, the primary aim of this study is to monitor and document current trends, benefits, and limitations of online architectural discourse and learning ecosystems from both students’ and tutors’ perspectives. It also investigates alternative pedagogical agendas in order to address the requirement to integrate different levels of students with online education. In this regard, the effects of the design medium, knowledge-based or theoretical courses, and practical courses are three common types of influences on educational system adaptability and inertia. Finally, in this research, authors attempt to formulate a theoretical framework and didactic principles for the modification of architectural online education by using multiple methods of data collection, primarily based on a systematic observation of the experiments, questioning the participants before and after the experiment, and evaluate of the descriptive results of the experiment.