Abstract:

Nowadays, a number of different learning techniques are being applied in architectural design studios for first year students. The “Constructivist teaching method”, one of these techniques which integrates different methods in education and can be called the common intersection point of different methods, is currently considered useful in architectural education. The “Contructivist teaching method” includes a procedure where the student actively participates in every stage of the learning process instead of being a passive listener. Constructivist teaching techniques as well as a wide variety of methods claim to be based on constructivist learning theory. Most of these techniques include some form of guided discovery where the teacher avoids encouraging the student to assume a passive listener position and rather supports learning sessions of question, answer, discussions and an interactive environment. For this purpose, experimental samples of design studio exercises are examined in this paper. Outcomes are determined beneficial to improve students’ creativity in the design process.
In these architectural design exercises the process and the product are dealt with equally. “Constructivist assessment strategies” are referred to as the teaching method in the evaluation process of the design produced by the students. Therefore, “oral discussions” are accepted as an essential input of design studio practice. Furthermore, there are several different strategies to compose the studio setup, such as “KWLH (Know-Want-Learn-How) chart”, “mind mapping”, “hands-on activities”, and “pre-testing”, the last-named of which can be thought of as an assessment for all these strategies. The “Constructivist studio”, which supports creativity in education, enables the students to use their abilites to the utmost in a design execise.

Keywords:

Architectural design education, constructivist teaching methods.