Abstract:

Design studios are often training students to work in teams, improving their collaboration skills. In studios, design students learn how to tackle complex problems in terms of concept definition, development of the design and detailing of the solutions. The team become the organisational units in which students design and develop their ideas. Nevertheless, they rarely assess and discuss with each other the way they worked together, constructively synthesising the experience they have lived together.

For this reason, we proposed a final self- and team evaluation activity to the students of a master course stimulating their reflection on the studio experience. During the activity, the students had the chance to individually reflect and assess the teamwork in each of the three studios of the course. Then, they presented their evaluation to others, discussing together the studio experience and merging their individual evaluations into a collective one. Moreover, the final evaluation becomes the moment in which the design process and its outcome are discussed.

Our test revealed that the implementation of a structured activity to evaluate teamwork could improve the learning outcome, helping students to collectively reflect on the experienced collaboration and on the developed design. Besides, the tool stimulated the students to self-reflect about the soft-skills they improved through the teamwork and the overall studio experience.

The paper presents the activity proposed and discussed the result of the test conducted on an interdisciplinary design master class.

Keywords:

Self-evaluation, team evaluation, design studio.