THE EFFECT OF TEACHING THROUGH THE SCENARIO PLANNING METHOD ON CREATIVITY IN ARCHITECTURAL STUDENTS’ DESIGN

Abstract

Countless studies have been conducted on architectural teaching in the recent years; however, only a few have focused on scenario planning methods, especially scenario planning in architectural teaching, which, in turn, shows the necessity for more research on different dimensions of the issue. This study reveals the results of a reflection upon a report including the documentation of the teaching process in an architectural design workshop entitled ‘designing my villa’. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating the effect of teaching through the scenario planning method on creativity in architectural students’ design. To this end, in a semi-experimental design, 104 students of University of Tehran were selected as the statistical sample using the random-sampling method. First, the pretest of the architectural design under the title of ‘residential villa’ was run. Then, the participants were divided into two homogeneous groups including the experimental group (teaching through the scenario planning method) and control group (routine academic teaching), and both groups participated in a 6-week teaching protocol. Later, the participants took a posttest on designing the residential villa. The pretest and posttest results were evaluated by 3 raters. To ensure normality of distribution of the collected data, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was run. Having confirmed the inter-rater reliability using the Cronbach’s alpha method, the data were analyzed to determine the progress of creativity in each group using the paired samples t-test and to determine the difference between the two groups using independent samples t-test. The results indicated progress in the architectural design creativity in both groups while the rate of progress in the group using the scenario planning method was significantly higher. Therefore, it can be concluded that using the scenario planning method in teaching architectural design can lead to greater creativity in students of University of Tehran compared to the routine academic methods, and this method can be regarded as a suitable way of enhancing creativity and improving architecture teaching processes. The findings of the present research can be used in instruction, curriculum development, and designing new buildings.