Proposing a criteria-based assessment pattern for architectural design studios

Architecture education is one of the most important issues in the development of architecture. In this decade, universities and colleges are increasingly committed to effective assessment of students to improve students' learning, and not just giving them a grade. The importance of examining this issue is that the assessment methods for architectural education systems that are based on design and studio, need more research than other fields. In the field of architectural design, unlike other fields students do not take part in written, descriptive, or multiple choice tests, and it is much more difficult to turn what architecture students offer into a score in comparison to other disciplines. One of the important pillars of education is evaluation. The crit is the most common assessment method and having feedback in architecture. In research on the crit, little attention was paid to the sense and reception of students from the process of evaluation, while being recognized as one of the greatest student's dissatisfaction. The purpose of this research is to understand the students' viewpoints about the current methods of the crit, in addition of studying student designing capability, evaluate the design and process, in a way to judge architectural projects to improve the quality of arbitration and education in this field, شnd provides model for the correct measurement and judgment method, based on goals and design process, relying on criteria which are based on educational objectives.

In this research, 40 undergraduate and postgraduate students at Sure university school of architecture were selected through cluster sampling as focus groups, and experts has been used to weight the criteria by AHP method.

Among them, critical explanation with weight of 38% is more important, after that the development of the chosen idea with 21%, the concept and design solution, with 17% & 14% eventually the final design with 10% is the least important of the five criteria.

In order to evaluate the architectural design based on the students' opinion and the previous methods of evaluation, a model was proposed. The proposed pattern correctly plays all four roles of evaluation - feedback, motivator, guide, evaluation-communication. With this model, students are graded based on the quality of their work and this have nothing to do with the performance of other students; and therefore there is no comparison between students. At the same time, because a number is presented in the end, the rank of the student is determined among the other students, while each person's work is compared to his own. In this model, the criteria are defined and prioritized based on the objectives of the course. The proposed model can provide strategies for practitioners of architecture education, such as lecturers and students to enhance their learning.