Critique Session

In design teaching across disciplines, a primary communication activity is through feedback interventions.  Using a qualitative framework, we identified instructor feedback types and usage across three different design disciplines (dance choreography, industrial design, and mechanical engineering), analyzed how feedback types push students to take convergent or divergent paths with their design ideas, and compared the similarities and differences evident in type of feedback used most often across disciplines. Our findings indicated that there are many common types of feedback used among the three disciplines, regardless of variance in context and expectations, and that the high frequency of feedback suggesting convergence or not suggesting either convergence or divergence leaves room to consider how to integrate feedback supporting divergence throughout design processes.

The core of architectural curriculum has always based on the design studio model which focuses on learning by doing and all processes and procedures of problem solving are transmitting trough lectures and critique sessions. The tutorial system in design studios is same as master- Apprentice. So students learn during a communication between students and teachers and also between students. By this way each student will have a chance to express his/her own perceptions and ideas and make a dialogue with experts (teachers) and peers and expose him/her self to their judgments. The current model in studios is based on ancient model. In some cases the traditional design studio in a school of architecture consists of a teacher telling students what to do and student doing what they are told. This traditional model must be redefined and be made clearer in order to improve both learning and teaching methods. This paper tries to analyze studio types and implemented methods of critique in them with the case of 2nd year studio of Architecture Department of The National University of Malaysia in order to find their weak and strong points and also to identify approaches and procedures that can be used to improve the studio based pedagogy in architecture. From this research it can be identified and analyzed that current studio exercise require a new mindset and new framework to be reconstructed and remodelled.

Design is one of the most complex types of problem solving that involves several aspects and components. Its cognitive processes and procedures should be transmitted to the students through lectures and critique sessions. The current model in studios is based on ancient model that must be redefined and be made clearer in order to improve both learning and teaching ways. This paper tries to analyze critique sessions in order to find its weak and strength points and also to identify procedures and tools that can be used to ...

To know about an educational system, we must look to its assessment procedures. Assessment is the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where they are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there. Assessment should not be seen separable from instruction, but also as a powerful tool for promoting deep learning activities. Assessment culture refers to educational evaluation practices that are compatible with current ideologies, social expectations, attitudes and values so the emergence of assessment cultures needs to be discussed with reference to current views on learning and education. The target of this paper is to understand whether same methods in architectural pedagogy can satisfy different learning styles, different backgrounds and cultures or not.