TEACHING HISTORY IN ARCHITECTURE: ACTIVE, CROSS-DISCIPLINARY AND EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING APPROACH VERSUS THE TRADITIONAL FORMS OF INSTRUCTION

Many educators in the higher education system tend to focus on teaching the students the ready-made knowledge rather than developing the students’ ability to analyze and understand how does the everyday build environment work and develop. Moreover, most of the theoretical courses in the traditional form of instruction are taught separately without applying a cross-disciplinary approach; in which the main subject is connected or related to other subjects. And, the education system mainly depends on memorizing rather than understanding and critical thinking.

This paper discusses a research to develop teaching history in the architecture, in the higher public education system in Egypt, specifically the Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan University. The study is applied in the history course that covers the early Christian era, Medieval, and Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo and the Architectural movements after the industrial revolution till the early 20th century. The courses discussed in this paper took place during the academic years (2013-2014 and 2014-2015) and were taught by the author.

The paper discusses and analyzes different methods used to change the traditional form of instruction to an active and experiential learning. These methods includes: site visits to the Christian and classical Egyptian sites and buildings, analytical and critical thinking, in-class and after class discussion and feedback, watching documentaries. Moreover a cross-disciplinary approach was adopted by applying exercises that connect the history course content with other courses such as architecture design, model making and building construction. And finally an exhibition with the students work took place in the end of each academic semester to raise the students’ presentation skills and abilities to explain and present their analytical and critical thinking to specialists, professionals and peers.

The discussion exceeds to include the obstacles that are faced by the teaching process and what was done to overcome them. These include: the online communication limitation due to the absence of the e-learning system, the limited numbers of the subject related sites and buildings in Egypt, the security problems facing the students during the field visits due the political conditions, the large number of the students in the course, logistic and financing issues, and other legislation and cultural problems.

This paper illustrates a series of in-class and out-campus exercises that were applied in order to develop the history course. The subject is essential to develop the history courses in Architecture. This paper contains a comparison of the new teaching approach verses the traditional forms of instruction. It concludes with findings and recommendation.