Studying the quality of teaching the course of the Introduction to architectural design (2) at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran

The importance of the process of teaching the basics of the architechtural design is obvious. Accordingly, before teaching the architectural design courses, it is suggested to take the architectural design courses, so that the students become familiar with the components required for these courses before entering the architectural design courses. Among these, the basic architectural design (2) is more related to teaching architectural concepts, so in this study, the quality of the teaching process of the course of the introduction to the architectural design (2) was examined based on educational, environmental psychology, physical and equipment or technology dimensions in two Ateliers of 5 and 6 so that the effect of different dimensions on the education process can be clarified and more efforts can be made to improve the quality of the education process.

This research is a descriptive-analytic study and based on its results, it is regarded as an applied research. In which the combined research method has been used. The first part of this study consists of a questionnaire and a survey of students. Data collection was done by field method, using resources and also interviews and questionnaires, using the Likert scale. The statistical population of the study comprised of 30 students of Atelier 5 and 28 students of atelier 6 in the second semester of the academic year of 2017-2018 who had passed the course of the introduction to architectural design (2). To compare the aforementioned four dimensions in Atelier 5 and Atelier 6, one-way analysis of variance in the software program of SPSS was used. The second part of the data analysis was related to examing the students’ exercises, based on seven components (creativity, concept, Relationship, function, structure, materials, and skills) as the syllabus was selected by the Ministry of Science for the exercises of the course of the introduction to architectural design (2) in which each of the course professors has also mentioned the related concepts when describing the practice.

The quality of the educational dimension in the range of 13-65 points in Atelier 5 with an average of 40 is lower than that of Atelier 6 with an average of 52. The quality of the two Ateliers of 5 and 6 in terms of the dimension of the environmental psychology, in the range of 5-26 points, has an average of 16.7 and 22.1, respectively. The quality of the training process of Atelier 5 and Atelier 6 in terms of the physical dimension in the range of 5-26 points has an average of 16.53 and 20.85, respectively. The students of Atelier 6 as compred to the students of Atelier 5 have a stronger belief in maintaining the spatial relationships of the atelier, and they believe its reason lies in the greater flexibility of the space. The quality of the training process of the two Ateliers of 5 and 6 has an average of 16.53 and 20.85 in terms of equipment in the range of 5-26 points, respectively. The second part of the analysis is related to examining the students’ exercises, which are based on the seven components (creativity, concept, relationship, function, structure, materials, and skills) as the syllabus selected by the Ministry of Science for the exercises of the course of the introduction to the architectural design (2) in which each of the professors has also mentioned the related concepts when describing the exercise. The findings indicate that in the exercises related to Atelier 5, the concepts used in terms of significance are creativity and skill, concept and function, the relationship and materials, and finally structure, respectively. Moreover, in the exercises relatd to Atelier 6, the concepts used in terms of significance are concept, creativity, and function and structure, relationship and Skill and, finally, material, respectively.

The results show that dimension of education in general is valuated as 63.79% moderate and 36.2% good, the dimension of the environment psychology is evaluated as 13.79% poor, 3.44% moderate and 68.96% good, the body composition is evaluated as 5.17% poor, 46.55% moderate and 31% good, and finally the dimension of technology wasevaluated 63.79% weak, 20.68% average and 15.51% good. According to the professors, in both ateliers, creativity is the most important component in designing the exercises provided for the course of the introduction to architectural design (2).