The present research investigates academic social climate in architectural studies as perceived by students. It studies the importance that the various measures of academic social climate have in the ...studio and in architectural classes. It also investigates the relation between the personal background of students and their sense of academic social climate. Academic social climate is evaluated with regard to the eight factors proposed by Moos (1979) dealing with: orientation to study material, innovation, academic social connections, teachers’ support, competitiveness, academic‐social involvement, order and organisation, teachers’ control and an index for general academic social climate by means of a survey. Findings show that academic social climate was higher in the studio than in the regular classes in social connections, students’ involvement, teacher support, and order and organisation; while academic social climate measures were higher in the regular classes in teacher control and in the orientation of learning material. The highest academic social climate measures in both studio and classes were students’ involvement and competence, and the lowest measures were teacher support, and order and organisation. Some items of students’ personal and educational background were found to affect their sense of academic social climate. The implications of these findings for architectural design education are presented.
The purpose was to study motivation for creativity in design students in the framework of the cognitive orientation theory which defines motivation as a function of beliefs of four types (about ...goals, norms, oneself and reality) concerning themes identified as relevant for creativity. It was hypothesized that scores of the four belief types would enable predicting creativity. The participants were 52 design students who were administered an actual design task and questionnaires: The Survey about Attitudes, Questionnaire about Designing and the Cognitive Orientation of Creativity (COQ-CR). The independent variables were the scores of the belief types based on the COQ-CR. The dependent variables were the evaluation of the creativity of the designs by four expert architects, and various variables based on self-evaluation of the students in the questionnaires referring to the design and designing process: fluency, flexibility, elaboration, fulfilling requirements, considering the context, having a central idea, meaningfulness of the task, involvement of feelings in designing, and handling constraints. Regression analyses showed that the majority of variables referring to creativity were predicted significantly by the predictors. The findings support the validity of the COQ-CR for assessing motivation for creativity and of the cognitive motivational approach to creativity.
Abstract This study explores the construction, characterization, and measurement of the design space using a novel approach that centres on First Occurrences (FOs) and Re-Occurrences (ROs) as ...metrics. Expert architects' cognitive behaviours during the design process were investigated empirically to gain insights into design space evolution. Findings reveal a consistent generation and revisiting of ideas, signifying an ongoing development of the design space. Future research should incorporate diverse methodologies and broader participant sample for a more comprehensive understanding.
The use of metaphors in design can help students reflect over a problem situation under an innovative point of view. During their design studies, students are supposed to acquire design skills, gain ...knowledge and enhance their level of expertise. This research explores the aid provided by metaphors in design problem solving, and its relationship to the development of design expertise. Empirical results showed that the level of expertise has no significant effect in the aid supplied by the use of metaphors in the earlier stages of the design process, concerned with the definition of design concepts and framing of design situations. In contrast, when expertise develops, the use of metaphors has a significant effect in the final stages of the design process, dealing with mapping, transfer, and application of structural relationships to the design problem. Although in the group of novices the use of metaphors was found to have a more significant effect in the earlier stages of the process, no differences between the different phases of the metaphorical process were found in the group of the advanced students. Metaphors are proposed as an educational method in the design studio, alternative to traditional education approaches. (Contains 1 table.)
Abstract Digital fabrication laboratories play a role as an educational environment in which different learning activities incorporate advanced technological developments. Digital fabrication design ...education often involves exploratory and scaffolded processes of materialising ideas into products. However, FabLabs poses multiple challenges for pedagogy and design learning. Based on a large-scale digital fabrication course in a higher education institution, we examine whether teamwork carried out in a digital fabrication environment improves creativity. Furthermore, we analyse if teamwork affects self-assessment of learning activities involving building tangible artefacts. Finally, we examine whether the type of produced prototype affects the team's overall performance. The results allow for digital fabrication design education recommendations, including interventions intended for improving the creativity of the outcomes, team performance, and learning of different digital fabrication issues.
Self-Perceived Creativity Kreitler, Shulamith; Casakin, Hernan
European journal of psychological assessment : official organ of the European Association of Psychological Assessment,
01/2009, Volume:
25, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
In view of unclear previous findings about the validity of self-assessed creativity, the hypothesis guiding the present study was that validity would be proven if self-assessed creativity was ...examined with respect to a specific domain, specific product, specific aspects of creativity, and in terms of specific criteria. The participants were 52 architecture students. The experimental task was to design a small museum in a described context. After completing the task, the students self-assessed their creativity in designing with seven open-ended questions, the Self-Assessment of Creative Design questionnaire, and a list of seven items tapping affective metacognitive aspects of the designing process. Thus, 21 creativity indicators were formed. Four expert architects, working independently, assessed the designs on nine creativity indicators: fluency, flexibility, elaboration, functionality, innovation, fulfilling specified design requirements, considering context, mastery of skills concerning the esthetics of the design representation, and overall creativity. The agreement among the architects’ evaluations was very high. The correlations between the nine corresponding indicators in students’ assessment of their design and those of the experts were positive and significant with respect to three indicators: fluency, flexibility, and overall creativity. On the contrary, the correlations of the rest noncorresponding indicators with those of the experts were not significant. The findings support the validity of self-assessed creativity with specific restrictions.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ
Abstract This paper examines how students' ideas evolve into physical prototypes within a digital fabrication design course. Examining the materials used, customization approaches, iterations, and ...team dynamics of 26 student projects reveals interplays between ideas, available tools, materials and constraints. Findings show the predominance of techniques, design preferences, concept refinement, and teamwork challenges. The implications highlight the value of hands-on iteration for alignment with reality and the need to support collaboration skills alongside technical prototype development.
The investigation reported here dealt with the study of motivation for creativity. The goals were to assess motivation for creativity in architectural design and engineering design students based on ...the Cognitive Orientation theory which defines motivation as a function of a set of belief types, themes, and groupings identified as relevant for the development of creativity. Differences between the two groups of students were expected in some of the scores of the belief types, themes, and groupings. Participants were 112 students (52 from architecture, and 60 from engineering) who were administered the questionnaire of the Cognitive Orientation of Creativity. Significant differences in numerous motivational contents were observed between the groups of students. Major characteristics of the architectural design students were an emphasis on the inner world, inner-directedness, and a development of the self, and of the engineering design students being receptive to the environment, and demanding from oneself despite potential difficulties. The findings provide insights for intervention programs targeted at improving architectural and engineering design education.
Metaphors enable the understanding of a concept in terms of another concept which is generally not associated with it. In problem-solving tasks, reasoning by metaphors has a significant influence in ...the development of innovative ideas. In the design domain metaphors help to structure thinking, and represent situations from a new viewpoint. Despite the frequent use of metaphors in design practice, no empirical work has studied in depth the role played by metaphors during the whole design process. In this research the aid and complexity of the use of metaphors are explored in the different phases of the design process. These phases deal with the definition of design concepts and framing of design situations, the generation of goals and constraints, and the mapping and application of structural relationships to the design problem.
Abstract
This study centers on using different types of brief information to support creative outcomes in architectural and engineering design and its relation to design expertise. We explore the ...influence of design briefs characterized by abstract representations and/or instructions to frame design problems on the creativity of concept sketches produced by novice and advanced students. Abstract representations of problem requirements served as stimuli to encourage associative thinking and knowledge transfer. The Ishikawa/Fishbone Diagram was used to foster design restructuring and to modify viewpoints about the main design drives and goals. The design outcomes generated by novice and advanced engineering/architecture students were assessed for their creativity using a pairwise experimental design. Results indicated that advanced students generated more novel design solutions while also contributing the most useful solutions overall. Implications for creativity in design education and professional practice are presented. Educational programs aimed at promoting creativity in the design studio may find it helpful to consider that the way design briefs are constructed can either promote or inhibit different aspects of design creativity.
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