A new way of social interaction for educational purposes in architecture design studios during the pandemic

Abstract

COVID-19 has challenged educational systems in whole parts of the world, including convenient courses and programs such as architecture. The architecture program is designed based on the design studios that deliver major parts of the activities in the program, such as design productions, project presentations, and receiving comments on the design activities from both instructors and juries. To test the students' satisfaction level with social interactions in design studio activities, a five-scale questionnaire was designed, and through Google Forms, the results were analyzed in SPSS. The findings reveal that communication, social interaction, and design activities are significant for the students. The students demonstrate overall satisfaction with the quality of the course delivery. However, the detailed design illustrates that students and instructors adopted an adapted way to the condition to reduce the risk by minimizing the group work and increasing the individual desk crits. This result shows that teamwork and peer learning were reduced during the pandemic.