Cooperative learning in design studios: a pedagogy for net-positive performance

Students of architecture are often inadequately prepared to address the consequences of climate change. Among the factors contributing to this, traditional design studio pedagogies tend to privilege individual ownership of projects instead of promoting cooperation and collaboration. This traditional focus on individual projects has the effect of minimizing the cognitive diversity that can be brought to bear within the development of projects, and that new knowledge is created through interactive processes based on the sharing and integration of previously unshared knowledge. A new studio pedagogy is presented in which cognitive diversity is foregrounded by means of shifting away from individual ownership of work and towards groupings of works and students. Periodic discussions focus on works grouped by thematic commonalities and re-assigned ownership based on interest, self-identified strengths (skills they can contribute or teach), or deficits (skills they need to learn), rather than authorship. Evidence from implementation reveals this process supports the creation of new knowledge in a short period of time (a 6.5-week studio) and students learn skills related to quantification of performance measures and develop capabilities to transform existing buildings to be net-positive contributors to their communities.

Practice relevance

The presented pedagogical method, entitled ‘Shifting Allegiances,’ is easy to replicate and flexible for customization. It does not require larger curricular or program changes and is not bound to specific content. It can be implemented by an individual instructor in a single studio section. An emphasis on shared student authorship, cooperative structures, and collaboration led to a learning process based on productive comparisons of student work. Comparisons in students’ energy modeling results due to in-depth knowledge of, and participation in, their colleagues’ work became second nature to the students. This led to the acquisition of new capabilities enabling students to use a variety of strategies to achieve a 70% reduction in energy demand over the current baseline; this was augmented further with the use of photovoltaics. Other aspects (water, waste, resources), selected by the students are also actively reduced to meet net-zero goals.