REFLECTIoNS ON ACTION

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REFLECTIoNS ON ACTION
GAZI UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE
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The core of the project is to develop a solution
for the adaptation problems of the students /
potential students of architecture who have
studied in existing secondary education system,
and oriented to design training. The project
aims to make the process of design training more
efficient and economic in terms of using human
resources. The project is organized in two
stages
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Stage I Vocational Guidance
Test/Self-evaluation Kit. To form a threshold
for design training within the present
educational system is the goal of this stage. It
will be a vocational attitude scale to measure
their interests and competences in design related
professions, those professions field of
interests, and the design related concepts. This
kit is going to be presented to the target groups
in digital environment, as an e-learning
project. Stage II Educational Guidance
Support Kit It is planned to present this kit
as a support unit for the students, within the
design education. It is formed to facilitate
acquiring the knowledge belonging to the realm of
design, concepts of design and design
related professions.
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The basic idea of the project is to provide a
VOCATIONAL AND EDUCATIONAL GUIDANCE, AND
ORIENTATION SERVICE. The professionals provide
guidance services and orientation in every stage
of education. The density and methods are
diverse. In general, guidance services aim to
assist and facilitate students physical,
psychological, academic development according to
their potentials, skills and interests within
their particular conditions. The ability of
making appropriate decisions, educational and
professional plan and programs, of realizing
itself through development can be achieved and
improved by means of rational and adequate self
recognition of the individual. The first step of
the guidance and orientation is recognizing the
individual with respect to the genetic heritage
and the characteristics gained from social
environment. The genetic heritage and
characteristics together constitute the
personality, behaviors, believes, interests and
skills.
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For a proper guidance service and orientation,
individuals behavioral and socio-cultural
characteristics need to be figured out through
different techniques. ? Gathering information
from the individual. ? Examination of the
individual by someone else. ? Tests Tests are
categorized in 5 different groups ? Aptitude
tests ? Academic success tests ? Interest
inventories ? Personality tests ? Attitude
Scales Tests are applied and evaluated by
specialists.
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There are a number of aptitude tests, scales and
inventories related to creativity and problem
solving skills used in educational and
professional guidance and orientation. There are,
however, not many interdisciplinary studies on
the guidance and orientation for design training
during the secondary education. It is obvious
that those instruments can help us to determine a
superficial tendency. Architectural Design
Education, however, is a highly specialized
field, which needs more deliberate evaluation on
the potentials, capabilities and future plans of
the individual. There is a strong need to
develop a particular professional guiding and
orientation kit for design education.
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The starting point of this study must be the
derivation of necessary skills / features to
fulfill the role of qualified architect, which
have been reframed many times by different
institutions such as UIA, RIBA, NAAB, etc.,.
Then, those skills and criteria are analyzed to
find out their reference interests, personality
features, aptitudes, and cognitive capabilities.
At this point, we need to define our perspective
in terms of psychology, development and guidance
(such as multi-intelligence theory, developmental
psychology, constructivism, or a proper
synthesis) to initiate our measurement and
evaluation instruments. After having
background, qualifications, and
psychological-cognitive-personality-physical
references, we need to develop scales,
inventories, or questionnaires to measure and
evaluate the eligibility of the candidates.
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Those instruments will allow the students to
evaluate themselves. As mentioned above, the
tests, however, are applied and evaluated by the
specialists. Thus, they should be designed as
suitable for self-evaluation process. The
feedback mechanism has to be arranged accordingly
as well. It is a fact that neither architects
designers, nor professionals in education,
guidance or measurement can make absolute judges
about future academic and professional careers of
people. The positive and negative
reinforcements have to be determined carefully.
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The development of the educational guidance will
follow the process. We need to determine the
academic success criteria for the architectural
education. The language, culture and educational
background differences will be collectivized. The
measurement and evaluation instruments will be
developed. They will be tested and verified by
pilot groups.
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Because of the international character of the
project, each stage has to be standardized, that
is, culture, language, region, or education
policy based issues have to be collectivized.
Since the common language of the project is
English, partners have to make it sure that
criteria and qualifications are translate and
verified by the specialist properly. Verification
must be realized through pilot applications
satisfying the minimum requirements of an
eligible scientific research. For the eligibility
of the study, partners should verify the
translations by the help of bilingual target
groups in their countries.
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Thus, each partner should have the support from
specialist on professional guidance and
orientation, measurement and evaluation, beside
psychologists and eligible translators. In this
context, partners should organize their work
program, timetable and budget accordingly. The
support of specialists on measurement and
evaluation, professional and educational guidance
and psychology could be provided by advisors,
sub-contractors, or additional team members.
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Transferring the end products onto electronic
setting, which has its own technical and
pedagogical aspects, will be another difficult
task. Or, we can either develop the kits
directly for computer use. In this case, we are
going to process the software development and
necessary analysis of the data parallel to the
test development. This process has to be run by
software developers guided by educational program
developers and us.
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Finally, when we have everything on hand, what
kind of accessibility are we going to provide for
the users? For 2 years, we will have enough
time to get public attention and make promotion
all around the world by using our networks. How
can the partners benefit from the project beside
its educational gains? What kind of marketing
strategy will be followed? For instance, If the
end product is designed as a downloadable
software, we would need to develop the WEB site
appropriate for internet sell with necessary
contracts with VERIESIGN like security providers.
If we will post some CD and written documents,
are we going to share the countries according to
the postal areas?
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As you can see, every single step has to be
designed carefully and we need to put our
principals from the very beginning. For sure,
the work packages will have been fixed when we
get back home, according to our timetable and
labor force. There is, however, a strong need
to define the framework together.