Redesigning the design crit

Author

Christine McCarthy – Victoria University of Wellington

Date completed: June 2011 

Executive Summary

This report outlines the key findings of research in the area of the design crit in architectural and design education. Traditionally the design crit is a key part of design and architectural education which dates from the nineteenth-century Beaux Arts education system. It involves students publicly presenting their design projects in front of critics, usually from academia and design practice. The critics ask questions and provide feedback on the project to the student. The aim of the design crit is to provide ungraded oral, formative or summative feedback, depending on when the crit occurs in relation to the design exercise, and to prepare the students for their careers as professional designers presenting their designs to clients.

Overcoming pedagogical difficulties

This research project sought to test the validity of new design crit types in the context of architectural and design education. This ambition is contextualised by research which has located pedagogical difficulties with the Traditional Crit form, which has been central to architectural and design education since the 19th-century.
These criticisms include:

• student inability to learn from the feedback given due to the heightened atmosphere of the crit
• the privileging of professional acculturation over student learning
• power asymmetry between staff and student, and
• student anxiety.

The key test of the crits was student feedback. Future research is needed regarding teaching staff feedback and objective measures of improved learning.

Collecting data

Data for the study was collected through focus groups of students who had only experienced the Traditional Crit, and groups of students who had experienced one or more of the experimental crit-types. Students participating in the trial design crits were drawn from second to fourth year architecture courses. Classes were determined by the aim to get a range of discipline-specific students across year groups, and the ability for teaching staff to incorporate new teaching techniques into their courses. Focus groups were conducted by a research assistant who was not involved in teaching the students.

Focus groups were transcribed allowing analysis identifying 8 themes, namely:

• the condition of the student
• the quality of the time in the crit
• learning outcomes
• student engagement
• environmental aspects
• crit relevance
• crit function

Some of these themes (e.g. learning outcomes) were anticipated in the focus group questions, and reflect the focus of the research. These themes informed the development of an online survey questionnaire. The internet survey aimed to take only a few minutes of students' time. It was designed to enable relevant student groups to answer questions about more than one crit-type, and to provide results which could be compared across crit-types when possible, and to reflect key differences between crit-types.

The internet survey was taken by a larger group of students. This group included first year students who had all experienced the Traditional Crit.

Key good practice recommendations

The main finding of the study was to validate the use of these experimental crits as viable alternatives to the Traditional Crit.
The research produced the following key recommendations for good practice:

1. Introducing new crit types, via the interim crit, exposes students to new experiences of critique which are less intimidating for students.
2. Peer-feedback, evaluation and critique (as shown by the Speed Crit and the Judging Panel Crits) are valid ways for students to learn from a crit context. Students considered such learning experiences to be productive (especially in the Speed Crit).
3. New crit types are ways to emphasise specific aspects of learning. By introducing experimental crits (for example at the interim crit stage) students may learn targeted skills which increase their confidence in Traditional Crits.
4. While the Traditional Crit is a point of anxiety, the focus groups indicated that it is still a highly valued learning tool, and, perhaps more importantly, a distinguishing factor of design education which students appreciate. Because it is valued, rather than simply replacing the Traditional Crit, supplementing it with other crit types may increase student skills and so reduce anxiety levels experienced in the Traditional Crit.
    

This work is published under the Creative Commons 3.0 New Zealand Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike Licence (BY-NC-SA). Under this licence you are free to copy, distribute, display and perform the work as well as to remix, tweak, and build upon this work noncommercially, as long as you credit the author/s and license your new creations under the identical terms.