Abstract:

Architectural Education, among all other High education faculties, is influenced by the effects of the covid-19 epidemic. Architectural education contains theoretical courses, computer laboratories, field training, and Design Studios. The design and planning studios are considered the backbone of architectural education. They are based essentially on a face to face contact and weekly review of the students work. They are interactive courses in which the student can attain practical design skills. The studios contain both summative and formative assessments. The Jury of architectural design projects is the principal method of formative assessment to students. So architectural education has different teaching and learning aspects, which is different from any other engineering program.

Because of covid-19 social distance precautions, the courses were taught online. From the teacher’s point of view, rush plans are made and implemented to insure achieving all preplanned intended learning outcomes and course goals. All mean to align the online teaching and learning applied processes to the learning objectives of the design process, to reach the most achievable learning outcomes in these circumstances. However, few publications in the literature are there about the students’ point of view in this regard. Various studies have indicated that there have been few negative feedbacks from some students about the online teaching and learning process of design studio in architectural schools.
The main objective of this paper is to investigate to what extent the learning outcomes are achieved according to the student’s point of view in faculty of Architecture and Planning in KAU in KSA, to improve the quality of online teaching and learning process. To achieve this goal, the research methodology goes through three steps. The first is to shed light on a literature review of the influence of the emergence of online teaching because of covid-19 in architectural schools. The second is to carry out a field study to investigate the student’s assessment of the emergence of online teaching and learning process. The third is that these results are cast into a set of recommendations about how to make the online teaching and learning process more effective in the Architecture and Planning faculty programs.

This research study lasted for two consecutive semesters forming a full academic year. It is carried out in the Architecture and Planning faculty programs in KAU in the year 2020, where the teaching and learning process was online by using blackboard under covid-19 circumstances. It is then compared to the original teaching and learning process that was applied in the year before. A questionnaire at the end of each year was distributed to all students in all programs to investigate to what extent were the learning outcomes achieved.

Keywords:

Online teaching and learning process, learning outcomes assessment, architectural education, Student’s point of view.