Abstract

Design education has evolved immensely in the last century from the apprenticeship model to organized universities, owing to various researches in psychology and pedagogy across the world. Out of the many teaching-learning theories, Dewey’s constructivism, Freire’s critical pedagogy, and Kolb’s experiential learning (EL) were instrumental in setting a strong foundation for the design studios’ “problem-based learning” that professed students constructed their own knowledge based on experiments they conduct. While design and visualization modules followed this pedagogy, in due time many modules were being taught in the lecture format of teaching, which led to lower cognition for students. This study establishes the value of EL and students’ constructing their own knowledge in a technology module in an interior architecture course. Construction and technology studios are crucial for space design courses like architecture and interior design. Many colleges approach these modules with a lecture and demonstration method, leaving little scope for students to construct their knowledge, leading to lesser learning for students. The longitudinal study is spanned across two years and two cohorts, with one cohort adopting the traditional lecture and demonstration-based approach, while the other cohort takes the iterative studio-based approach. The process uses the aspects of Kolb’s experiential learning with Dewey’s constructivism in order to create a studio where students could experiment, reflect, and construct their own knowledge. The results show that by changing the modality, the students’ perception of their overall engagement with the module increased from 78 percent to 96 percent. Similarly, the students’ perception of their overall learning increased from 72 percent to 92 percent. The importance of constructive assessment was highlighted as students developed motivation and clarity with every assessment. The results also found that EL made the concepts clearer, thus promoting deep learning. The better understanding of concepts was reflected as design decisions in students’ design projects that verified the benefits of EL in technology studios.