Architecture higher education 2.0

This piece reflects an ongoing personal consideration how architectural education could and should change. The text will surely evolve in time, hopefully also thanks to discussions and feedback from you, the reader!

This text is written from the perspective of architecture, but in my view, it is valid for all STEM higher education.

Version 1 (25 sept 2024)

Accreditation is the means to ensure that a school will provide graduates with sufficient quality. This is important for financing, the graduates, the industry that will hire them, and so on. This is a good thing.

Why however, does accreditation look at study programs? To check if the program is consistent and complete. Again, this is a good thing. There are however, two problems with the focus on study programs:

1. Problem 1: It tends to fill up study programs 100% with obligatory topics, to make sure "that we teach everything".
2. Problem 2: If there are no good teachers, then not even the best study program can save the day.

This leads to the first assertions:

It is an illusion that we can and must teach everything. This is impossible.

Teaching and knowledge is in the people, not in the study programs.

Principle 1: The logical conclusion is, that we should accredit the teachers, not the program.

Can we reverse the current situation by radically going from 100% filled study programs to 100% free study programs? Yes, we can. All the building blocks for doing so are present.

We need to address before this, another fundamental question about the pedagogy of higher education, and how we treat our students (and how our students treat themselves):

Are students passive consumers that are processed in our 'learning factories' or are they active learners with structured reflection?

Education is shifting from traditional "checklist"-behaviour to strategies where the student takes their learning path in their own hands. There are several varieties to such strategies, such as Challenge-Based Learning, Problem-Based Learning, Project-Based Learning, and so on. Characteristic of all of them is, that they put responsibility for what the student needs and want to learn primarily with the student first, and with the teacher/school second - as a facilitator. Essentially linked to this is integrated reflection by the student (again, seconded by the teacher and school) on his/her own progress.

Not surprisingly, these shifts closely reflect the kind of graduate that we should deliver to society: not someone who passively follows orders, but an active person who is capable to structure and pursue their knowledge needs, and who is capable to work together with other people (more about this aspect later).

Principle 2: Students are active learners who can construct their learning path under guidance of the school.

This does make it necessary however, that students not only need to learn and obtain the necessary skills and knowledge provided in the courses and studios, but also need to learn from day 1, how to learn itself. This means that it is necessary to foster a habit and culture of self-monitoring and reflection by the student and in the school. Without asking yourself frequently, "what is it good for", we are back to passive consumer behaviour.

Principle 3: Structured reflections must be embedded in the students' learning behaviour.

In the traditional approach, the assumption is that if you follow the study program, this will ensure the coherence and logic of what you learn. With active learners, this question must be core to the attitude of the students themselves. One would be right to point out, that students who do not have this behaviour, have no business being a student in higher education. Nevertheless, it also a skill-set that must be learned and acquired.

With 100% free study program, the courses and studios do not disappear. They are just organized in a different way. Fixed accredited programs have their logic from paper administration; when it was infeasible to create individual study plans for hundreds of students. In today's day and age, that barrier no longer exists.

From the law of high numbers it follows, that a large proportion of students will follow highly similar individual study programs. The difference is, that the fringes, where the variation will take place, are much more varied because there is no more distinction between "core" subjects and "secondary" subjects. Thus there will be many more flavors how to study architecture.

Rather than study programs, students will enter profiles that cater to their learning path. Many students will need to orient themselves in the first year, so the offer in their profiles will be very similar to co-learners in that year. However, already here, determined students may set profiles that differ from their peers.

Let's face two regular objections to this approach:

1. Objection 1: this will lead to chaotic study profiles that do not make sense.
2. Objection 2: students will create individual profiles that are very easy.

Concerning objection 1, with the active learner, it was already argued that structuring and making sense of the study program is part of the embedded structural reflection in the student. Obviously, this cannot be left with the student alone - the school will need to assist in this process. There must be several moments during the study, where the individual plan is assessed and approved.

Concerning objection 2, one must ask quite frankly, that if it is possible to construct an individual study program that is perceived as easy, that perhaps the offer of courses is below par to begin with. Both the student and the school must actively engage in a dialogue when constructing the individual study plan to make sure it makes sense.

People, not programs

The asset of the school is the people, not the programs. Programs tend to set artificial boundaries between study paths, disciplines, and domains. Shifting attention from fixed programs to people and what each person has to contribute to the school, makes it easier to do multi-disciplinary work in teaching and research.

The same holds true not only for the faculty and its members, but also for the whole school itself, in which the faculty is embedded. Reaching out across traditional faculty borders to learn and work together with other people must be easily possible rather than structurally inhibited.

Principle 4: Blurred disciplinary boundaries

In practice, it is highly unlikely that any graduate will work alone. Soft skills like teamwork, collaboration, leadership, and (project) management are important and should be acquired already in the study phase of the student.

At the EAAE 2024 conference in Munster, there was a panel discussion lead by Krzy? Koszewski about mental health of students and teachers in school of architecture. It was widely recognized by many people joining the panel that this problem is present not only in architecture schools world-wide, but in higher education in general. There was consensus that one way how to counter this, is to have students team up from day 1 in their students with someone else to establish dual learning paths, prevent feelings of isolation, and stimulate teamwork. This perfectly aligns with the above mentioned important soft skills of teamwork.

Principle 5: Multi-loci of knowledge

The Alma Mater is the school where the students personally attend their education. This is a very formative and important phase in the life of the student. What is however increasingly less true, is that the school is the sole locus of knowledge. We learned the lesson unfortunately the hard way during the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020-2023 which forced distance learning upon the world population. What emerged from this was a wide acceptance of distance learning, working, and researching together - something which before that time was seen as exception rather than rule.

For the student and the school breaking this boundary means that there is no longer one locus of knowledge, and that the only group of people from which you can learn are the ones in the same school. That means that if you cannot find the expert or person who can help you with something at home, chances are that you can find her or him online. The same applies for knowledge resources.

The implication is that networks of knowledge become much more prominent in education and research - and schools would do well to invest more in such networks.

Principle 6: Research-based education

Finally, the last transformative point of architectural education should be research-based education. Partly this coincides with emphasis on cross-boundary, multi-disciplinary, and team-work. Similarly as the student should be asking her- or himself all the time, "why am I learning this?" the teachers (and the school as institution) should be asking themselves and itself also all the time, "why are we teaching this?" This means a more prominent role for research in place of tradition, type, and craft that are still quite common in many schools of architecture.

Does that mean that tradition, type, and craft should disappear? No. Tradition is necessary to understand where we come from and how the current world in which we have to act has come to be. Type is a very condensed form of knowledge of conglomerates of building-social-economic structures that can feed effectively into the design process. Craft is an understanding of the tectonic nature of building materials and construction and basic to the act of building itself. As the adage: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results" states however, solving problems and challenges of today and tomorrow is not done by automatically continuing in tradition, type and craft of yesterday. This can only be seriously assessed by doing research.

Preliminary conclusion

So how should architecture education change:

• Accredit people, not programs.
• Prefer 100% free profiles rather than 100% fixed programs.
• Take students as active learners, not passive consumers.
• Integrate principles of challenge-based type learning and structured reflection in education.
• Stimulate teamwork and multi-disciplinary work from day 1.
• Establish networks of knowledge, outside the faculty, and outside the university.
• Establish research-based education.

As stated at the start of this article, these are thoughts in progress on education in architecture. There is no absolute truth here - I am also searching for other loci of knowledge and experience in this matter. So any reaction and feedback is very welcome here. Feel free to react!