The Influence of Education Duration and Course Continuity on the Emotional Intelligence and Creativity of Graduates; An Exploration of Architectural Education Systems

The impact of the connection between education duration and course presentation method on the learning rate of graduates has always been a debatable issue within an integrated holism or as separate and parallel components. One concrete experience can be seen in the transformation process of the architecture education system since 1999 by changing the degree from a contiguous master's to a bachelor's degree. In the new system, course dispersion and lack of coordination of professors have led to inconsistency in the architecture education process reducing the individual skills and creativity of graduates. The mentioned problems have led to more inefficient architects rather than graduates or previous courses. The main question of this study is which one of the architecture education systems has had more influence on the emotional intelligence and creativity of graduates. This mixed research aims to examine the effect of two long-term (contiguous master's degrees) and short-term (bachelor's degrees) on the emotional intelligence and creativity of architecture graduates. The quantitative data were collected through an emotional intelligence questionnaire by Travis Bradberry and Greaves and Creativity questionnaire by Abedi. For this purpose, 30 graduates of architecture contiguous master's degree (MSc) and 30 graduates of bachelor's degree (BA) from the Azad University of Tabriz filled out these questionnaires. The results indicate that teaching architecture courses within long-term contiguous MSs improves the individual and social skills, and emotional intelligence (EQ) of the graduates. When these skills are improved, the mind of the architect can create new ideas. Therefore, long-term architecture education in the mixed method is a dynamic and targeted education since it improves the EQ and creativity of architects.