Abstract:

The spirit of Architectural education is the stimulation of creativity at the students minds through the education process, aiming at helping the learner to achieve the Bloom’s synthesis level of learning. The only chance to produce such successful Architectural education, let alone the ability to continuously improve it, is through objective assessment of its creativity level. All accreditation standards aim to pay special care to assessment of the vital components of the education programs, Architectural included.

In response to the need for developing the higher education systems in the KSA, the National Commission for Academic Accreditation and Assessment (NCAAA) was established to determine the standards by which institutions abide to in their programs to assure quality of learning and management of these institutions. During the past two years, King Abdulaziz University has adopted the NCAAA standards and is in the process of being recognized as upholding the accreditation. During that time the Architectural department at Faculty of Environmental Design in King Abdulaziz University have examined its adherence to the NCAAA standards.

It is the purpose of this paper to examine the standards laid down by the Commission in light of its applicability to assess creativity in architectural education. Thus identifying the relevance of those standards for design schools and further identifying any possible misgivings. To achieve this goal the research methodology goes through three steps. First, is to shed light on the properties of the creativity stimulating element in the Architectural education. Second, is to explore the needed procedure for assessment of the creativity level according to the Bloom’s taxonomy of levels of learning. Third is to compare these procedures to the NCAAA standards. A filed study is carried out to assess the evaluation of NCAAA to the elements of creativity in KAU Architectural educational program that is six hundred students strong. The study lasted for two consecutive semesters. The results showed that, there is a room to improve on the sensitivity of the adopted standards regarding assessing the creativity stimulating element.

Keywords:

Creativity, Architectural education, accreditation standards, assessment.