Abstract:

The spread of COVID-19 has affected various areas of life around the world. The lockdown policy taken by Saudi Arabia and Bahrain during the COVID-19 period has succeeded in curbing the spread of the pandemic in the region. Despite this, there have been other impacts in the field of architecture and design education as many young people who were educated in the lockdown period are now graduating and have yet to acquire several skills needed in working life due to their inability to move during COVID.

This study examines students' satisfaction with the results of their learning during the COVID-19 period in two Gulf universities in the Arab region that are close in terms of geography and demographics after converting the study from in-person to online and the presence of a ban on their movement during their academic achievement of the practical courses in their study plan, which requires field visits and friction with the labor market. On the other hand, the two courses used are core courses in their programs and have a similar nature and importance in the study plan, both in the architecture and design program. They were similarly taught with correspondence in their assessment methods. The study consists of two sections; the first section is a theoretical background based on a comprehensive review of the literature to ensure the global importance of this research, and the second section is a statistical analysis of the data of the official university questionnaire survey that measures student satisfaction with these courses before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers analyzed the results of the official questionnaire that Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University and the University of Bahrain distributed annually to all courses to ensure students' satisfaction with the course items during the semester. The researchers selected 2018-2019 for pre-pandemic data and 2020-2021 for the post-pandemic period to check student satisfaction in two core courses.

The analysis's results showed that despite the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' proficiency in practical courses that require higher skill levels, student satisfaction with teaching methodologies and course learning outcomes in these courses was high in both periods. The results of the analysis showed that the satisfaction of students in these courses with the teaching methodologies and course learning outcomes in both periods was high, despite the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' efficiency in practical classes that require higher skill levels and may need to address these adverse effects to develop contingency plans to overcome the resulting damage to the skill level of students and train them to practice professionalism in the labor market so as not to affect the efficiency of architectural and design education in the region.

Keywords:

Architectural education, Design education, students’ satisfaction, COVID-19 impact on education, Gulf Universities.