The Effect of Visual Notes on the Rate of Learning Theoretical Courses in the Field of Architecture

As a study conducted on teaching and learning, the main purpose of the present research is to investigate the effect of visual notes on the rate of learning the History of World Architecture (HWA) as one of the theoretical courses in the field of architecture. The research undertaken here demonstrates that visual note-taking as one of teaching methods allows students to attach their own symbols to represent meaning. In light of visual notes, participants are engaged in more self-monitoring events than non-drawing participants. Additionally, the use of visual notes during the learning process of theoretical courses in the field of architecture is an effective strategy to enhance the educational performance of students. Referring to Bloom’s Taxonomy, visual notes are considered an elaborative encoding strategy that plays a critical role in the memory performance. The statistical population of this study consisted of 59 undergraduate architecture students who attended the course of the History of World Architecture and were randomly clustered. By selecting two experimental and control groups, the present study utilized a post test design. 39 people were allocated to the experimental group and 20 people to the control group. As well as lectures, learners in the experimental group were also required to describe the physical characteristics and geometric-spatial features of each monument and draw its design. The posttest-only control group design was used and the data were collected using a researcher-made test. The validity of the test was assessed based on the opinions of experts, and the reliability coefficient for 29 questions of the test was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha to be 0.84. Data were analyzed using SPSS software and the student t-test. Bloom’s Taxonomy helped to design a learning experience to identify, classify, and outline what students are expected to learn in this course. The results of the study show that the visual notes taken by students on architectural monuments has a statistically significant effect on the rate of learning and better performance in remembering, understanding, and explaining the physical and semantic features of historic monuments of the concepts taught by teachers in the classes of the History of World Architecture. Taking visual notes based on observation, recording, perception, connecting, analyzing, and encoding offers global education, through which learners are engaged in a deep cultural exchange rather than merely transacting.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Teach.2023.68

Volume Editors
Massimo Santanicchia

ISBN
978-1-944214-44-9