Sandra Felix (Lecturer in the Third Year Architectural Design Studio

COVID-19 and Temporary/ Permanent Online Studio Learning/Teaching

SANDRA FELIX Lecturer in the Third Year Architectural Design Studio

The initial 21-day lockdown period announced by the South African government felt like a temporary measure, but as the lockdown period was extended the permanence of the situation started to sink in. Initially, the move to online learning was a temporary measure to continue and complete a current curriculum project which was nearing completion. Following advice to “please do a bad job of putting your courses online…” (Barrett-Fox 2020), we as a cohort of third year Design lecturers and tutors in the School of Architecture and Planning at Wits University, started to experiment with the available online tools and released ourselves and our students from any high expectations.

The university closed on the 17th of March 2020 whilst teaching final year undergraduate students nearing the completion of their Design Project 2. This project would form the basis of the core third year outcome, namely the ability to complete holistically, an architectural project through the integration of cohesive conceptual, technical, aesthetic and sustainability objectives.

The final year undergraduate curriculum is conceptualised as an integration of the various courses including Design, History, Office Practice and Construction through a principal project, and thereby mirrors the integrated practice students encounter once they graduate. It was therefore imperative that we continue the working pace of the project even during the move to online learning so as not to impede other courses’ curriculum progress.

Instead of spending, and possibly wasting much needed time conceptualising and planning online learning in a crisis period, our staff cohort stepped into experimental action akin to action research albeit with faster iterative cycles of action and inquiry. We tested and learnt about the various online tools available to us and our students in real time and adjusted accordingly. We very quickly learnt that there was no one solution for all students and all tutors. A psychologist on a local radio station further confirmed our approach by noting that people who thrive under crisis situations are those that experiment and learn.

Online Design crits reminded us that the crit is a unique exploratory conversation between student and tutor. This uniqueness applied both to the interactions between student and tutor as well as to the myriad of tools experimented with to conduct crits, from sophisticated online interactive whiteboards on various online meeting apps with real time screen sharing of the students

Figure 1: Project 2 Sections, Priyan Moodley

digital drawings, to sending data vouchers to students in order to be able to share photos of hand drawn sketches via messaging apps, and broken telephonic conversations.

The initial experimental approach continued but was gradually standardised in response to reducing data costs, connectivity issues and university sanctioned zero data sites.

Collaboration and input from experienced online architectural lecturers such as Lone Poulsen, founder of Open Architecture, further assisted the move from a temporary experimental approach to a more permanent standardised online learning pedagogy which however retains the initial experimental impetus.

Many students, so reliant on the various digital drawing and sketching programs, have felt significant anxiety due to the loss of these tools. The realisation that well resolved and carefully thought through design solutions are not dependant on software, is a

very positive consequence within the Covid19 design studio, as some students are still controlled by the digital tools available and their competency or lack thereof.

This realisation echoes a long-forgotten refrain from a graphics and drawing lecturer from FAUP1, a practicing sculptor who noted that a student’s use of digital drawing software was akin to a sculptor using electrical cutting tools versus hand chiselling tools, and that until the sculptor is able to cut his/her own toenails with the electrical cutting tools, the tool was controlling him/her and not the other way around.

The student’s proficiency in the various digital drawing software is the deciding factor on whether the tool controls the student and their design output or vice versa.

The current constraints experienced by the students of a lack of access to computers or software could be an opportunity to refine a design project unencumbered by the potential digital proficiency problems. This was borne out by amazing hand drawn submissions by students without access to their usual software on campus. As the core project approached completion, the design staff

1 Faculty of Architecture Porto University, Portugal team began conceptualising how the planned curriculum could adjust to the new paradigm. In commencing a new project that would potentially need to be completed wholly online, we adjusted our planned brief in response to the real time issues we were observing. The question of how to balance online teaching/learning, research, practice, and personal and family well-being had come to the fore during this time of Covid19 pandemic, isolation and lockdown. This was true for both students and staff. The constraints inhibiting our students from productively continuing their design studies through online and distance learning during Covid19 are myriad and reflect the national statistics. As per StatsSA 49% of the South African Adult population live under the Upper Band Poverty Line (UBPL) which is defined as living on R1183 or less per month.

Furthermore, 24.8% of the 2018/2019 registered students at Wits university were funded by NSFAS (National Student Financial Aid Scheme) and whose family income is less than R350 000 annually.

An initial analysis of our thirdyear class indicates that between 35% and 40% are struggling during this period of lockdown and online learning. Approximately 10% of our students are unable to work

productively due to resource and physical environment constraints. These include a lack of access to a computer and drawing software, very limited access to data or consistent connectivity and thereby limited access to online university resources and communication with their design tutors.

The physical environment constraints ranged from no space to work, a lack of paper to draw on, needing to assist younger siblings with home schooling, or the household with chores. We have anecdotally found that both female staff and students face the additional burden of taking on more family and home responsibilities. This has been documented by the poor statistics of publication submissions by female academics during this time in comparison to their male counterparts (Flaherty 2020).

Another 10% of our students are experiencing mental health and anxiety that is impeding their progress, which is understandable given the heightened levels of anxiety in the general population due to Covid19. Our final graduating year students are adapting to online learning and are concerned about their employment prospects once they graduate.

Interestingly, in any design studio, there will always be students that work well independently and students that require additional support for a myriad of different reasons, or students for whom the communal energy of the studio is integral to their success. If we compare the 2019 cohort of students’ results with the 2020 cohort, we can see the impact of Covid19 on the current progress of the academic year. In 2019, for their Sketch Design/ Plan submission for the same project (albeit with a different site and slightly adjusted program) 24% of the students achieved a mark below 60%. In contrast the 2020 cohort had commenced the project in studio but were forced half-way into the project into lockdown and online learning before their online Sketch Design submission.

The results are compelling, 39% of the 2020 class did not achieve a grade above 60%. This very narrow comparison suggests that the negative impact of Covid19 on students translates into a 15% increase of the students who need critical additional support from 2019 statistics.

In response to the above constraints the next project “New Spatialities in a time of Plague” envisages several tasks which we feel would be beneficial to students on a personal, inter-personal and community level.

As per Prof. Laurie Santos of Yale, the mental health challenges of Covid19 can be overcome by focussing on three lessons: socialize, help others and be present (Santos cited by Kretchmer 2020). The tasks included reflection on their personal Covid19 and lockdown experiences, as well as those of others, and conceptualising how architects could intervene in any number of solution scales from body armature to city wide urban interventions in order to encourage students to be present and focus on helping others.

Furthermore, as many students were verbalising the incredible isolation of online learning in comparison to the studio environment, we divided the class into thematic investigation groups, and smaller working groups based on their initial personal reflections in order to foster increasing peer to peer learning and discussion across the class, as well as increase socialization.

This approach initially conceptualised as an intuitive response to the real time Covid19 experiences of staff and students, is also in sync with the Stanford Life Model approach encountered in a recent webinar with the focus on a balance between academic, community and wellness, and that all layers of a participant’s life from inner to relational, communal, academic and the life of others need to be present in the classroom. (Krafcik and Larimer 2020)

The emergency move to Online Learning/Teaching has had well documented negative consequences. However as per Desmond Tutu we are all prisoners of hope (Tutu as cited by Pimenides 2020), and there have been positive outcomes to this ongoing experiment, one of which is the much closer collaboration between academic and teaching staff both in our faculty, across the university and even across the world.

We are all facing much the same issues, and through online meetings and numerous live or downloadable webinars we are all learning from each other, much in the same manner that we would like our students to experience peer to peer learning in a studio environment.

References:

Barrett-Fox, Rebecca. 2020. Rebecca Barrett-Fox. 12 March. Accessed March 2020. https:// anygoodthing.com/2020/03/12/ please-do-a-bad-job-of-puttingyour-courses-online/.

Flaherty, Colleen. 2020. “No Room of One’s Own.” Inside Higher Education, 21 April. https://www.insidehighered.com/ news/2020/04/21/early-journalsubmission-data-suggest-covid19-tanking-womens-researchproductivity.

Krafcik, Drew, and Amy Larimer. 2020. “An Integrative Vision for Authentic Agency, Belonging + Wellbring in the (online) classroom.” Studio-Based Online Learning: Building Community and Engaging Design at a Distance. ACSA. 27 March. https://www. acsa-arch.org/webinars/studiobased-online-learning-webinar/.

Kretchmer, Harry. 2020. “A professor of happiness explains how to deal with COVID-19.” World Economic Forum. 21 April. Accessed May 16, 2020. https://www.weforum.org/ agenda/2020/04/coronaviruscovid19-science-of-wellbeingyale-advice/.

Pimenides, Frosso. 2020. “The WHY, the WHAT, and the HOW : Before, During online teaching ,and Beyond.” Association of Architecture Schools Australasia Online Learning Webinar#3. Prod. Association of Architecture Schools Australasia. 15 May. https://aasa.org.au/onlinelearning/195/webinar-3maintaining-studio-culture-inonline-learning