A reflection on History of Islamic Architecture Introduction course via undergraduate students perspective from concept of Islamic architecture

According to Architecture curriculum, the History of Islamic Architecture Introduction is the only course in architecture curriculum in Architecture Faculties that is about Islamic architecture. The overall objectives of the course are: familiarity with the concept of Islamic architecture, understanding spatial characteristics and special qualities of this type of architecture, being familiar with principles of designing this type of architecture and giving identity to students’ architecture design. Although the course is approved by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology and offered for all architecture students and students are expected to achieve a relative understanding of the concepts outlined in the course, the evidence suggests that the students do not get the common understanding of the content. Thus, program's consensus to achieve its goals in creating Islamic architectural knowledge in architecture students can be questioned. Using an analytic research method, the present study gathered the required information through library studies and questionnaires. For the final evaluation of the operational pattern of research and the determination of the dependency relationship between the variables, a multivariate Structural Equation Modeling was used. The results showed that the diversity of the topics which referred to the topics of curriculum and the lack of perception from the expected concepts of “Islamic Architecture” are important factors in the lack of complete understanding of students from the expected implications of the program. Based on the results, the review of the content of this course and the emphasis on the historical aspect of the concept of Islamic architecture in the undergraduate architecture seems necessary.