Motivating Architecture Students in the Design Studio: Case Studies From Female University, KSA

Introduction

Motivating students is one of the significant challenges that face Architecture educators in Design Studios, in which the students gain the essential expertise and knowledge necessary to develop various skills in design to produce innovative, and competent design solutions (Önal & Turgut, 2017; Ibrahim & Utaberta, 2012). Design Studio course lies at the core of Architecture education, in which learning through an educational process of ‘learning by doing’ forms the student experience. Compared to other classrooms, the Architecture students are engaged intellectually and socially in different types of activities that challenge students’ thinking modes and their innovative, spiritual, and intellectual powers.

Unfortunately, studies have been made clear that the higher education students are significantly exposed to a higher level of depression and lower level of satisfaction compared to their contemporaries Busby (2018). In this regard, the Architecture is one of the most challengeable education, and Architecture students are mainly exposed to psychological stress and physical fatigue while working in the design class. This kind of stress may potentially cause the students’ disappointment especially if they could not reach the level of innovation they aspire to or fail to overcome learning difficulties (Sachs, 1999).

Motivating Architecture students can significantly help in overcoming the learning failures, as well as, it takes part in their physiological needs such as feeling safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. When the students are motivated, they are in high energetic status, and they can work longer, harder, and with more vigor and intensity than when they are not (Kirci, N.& Yildirim, K., 2013).

In general, humans are born with high motivation to learn, experiment, and improve, so, it is valued to keep students passionate, motivated, and full of energy to learn, rather than leaving them disappointed. The American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) in its report of the AIAS Studio Culture Task Force, declared the importance of teaching the Architecture students within a culture of optimism to encourage them to create a design that impacts human life positively, and keep them more confident and believe in their success in the Architecture profession. In this regard, the instructors can support the Architecture education by providing the architect’s students by the best motivation for learning and stimulating their power of interest within the learning experiment (AIAS. Studio Culture Task Force, 2002).

The importance of maintaining a positive spirit among students and their interest for learning is due to that the students who feel positively are more enjoyed and motivated, this aids learning and their development across physical, cognitive, emotional, moral and spiritual dimensions (Farag & Doheim, 2020). Moreover, positively motivated students can produce surprising results in the Design Studio (Legény & Špaček, 2019). Conversely, driving students to engage, learn, work effectively, and achieve their potentials at learning, contributes to stimulating students’ energy, interest, and enjoyment. The instructors play an active role in promoting Architecture students’ motivation and engagement. When the instructor shows satisfaction and confidence in teaching, pedagogical efficacy, and effective orientations in the Design Studio, this results in a positive impact on students’ engagement and motivation (Martin, 2006).

This chapter aims to discuss the power of motivation in achieving a productive and fruitful learning experience in the Design Studio. The objective is to provide focus on the students' motivation determinants in the Architecture Design Studio within the opportunity to present case studies for learning innovations in female university in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The discussion focuses on the instructor-student interrelationship built as it has been adopted in several cases in the Design Studio courses at different levels at the Architecture department. The presented case studies introduce Design Studio activities and implementation to get students to be more motivated to learn and investigate innovative ideas for incorporating learning techniques. The case studies chosen are studio courses from freshman to senior levels at the College of Architecture at Effat University in Jeddah.