Abstract
This study aims to make a critical reading on the constraints and potentials that emerge through the transition from face-to-face to screen-to-screen teaching and learning experiences in design education during the COVID-19 pandemic. By making a critical reading of current discussions, mostly in narrative surveys, on architectural design education, it is attempted to re-contextualize the emerging concepts of the remote teaching and learning to the broader context of design studio pedagogy literature. The theoretical framework of the study is based on the model developed by Shaffer (2003) regarding the three main elements of the design studio pedagogy as (1) “surface structures”, (2) “pedagogical forms” and (3) “epistemological principles.” The study revealed that the current situation, on the one hand, opened the ways for us to test “new” tools, methods and experiences of teaching and learning, and on the other hand, allowed us to better understand the potentials and well-functioning aspects of the “existing” pedagogical models. Rather than reducing the discussions on remote teaching and learning to a ‘technology-driven’ paradigm change in design education, future research should focus on the effects of changing pedagogical tools and practices on the manifold dimensions of ‘human learning’, which in turn will have implications for the epistemology of design pedagogy.
Highlights
From March 2020 on, the lockdown resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic has created tremendous impact on various fields of life; the field of higher education was not an exception
This study aims to make a critical reading on the constraints and potentials that emerge through the transition from face-to-face communication to screen-to-screen on the basis of design studio pedagogy
Gray (2016, p. 272) notes, in Shaffer’s (2003) model while the surface structures refer to “the physical, readily apparent elements of what comprises a studio environment”, the pedagogical forms are more related with the “instructional landscape of the studio” that derive from the ways the teaching and learning activities peculiar to design education are performed by the tutor and the students; and the epistemological principles are made manifest through the “‘hidden curriculum’ of how a student’s progress is judged, what kinds of behaviors are rewarded and, what the discipline values and/or rewards.”
Summary
From March 2020 on, the lockdown resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic has created tremendous impact on various fields of life; the field of higher education was not an exception. For the field of architectural design education that dwell on a studio tradition spanning more than a century, the obligatory removal of the physical studio environment and of the inter-subjective communication generated through ‘design crits’, is transforming the ongoing teaching and learning practices and experiences. In this environment that is defined as the “new normal,” the technological problems such as lack of computers, lack of reliable Internet access or the limited licenses for the universities (archinet.com), are merging with the emotional and psychological tensions both for instructors and students arising from the change of established pedagogical approaches and Journal of Design Studio, v:2 n:1
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