The educational role of evaluation: formative and shared evaluation in the university field

Nowadays, we have a scenario marked by an increasingly complex and time-consuming formative model, which differs considerably from that which has been used until now. This raises the need to rethink, review and reconsider the teaching and learning model of today's universities with the aim of designing a new educational model that responds to the new emerging training needs that early twenty-first century society demands. These changes in the training model make it necessary to rethink the existing evaluation processes, which are going to be affected by strong changes. They are determined not only by the passage of the traditional emphasis put on the teacher and the education, to the importance that is given today to the lea rning and to the student as the centre of this learning process; but it also changes the purpose of evaluation, moving from the acquisition of a series of academic knowledge to the development of skills and gaining basic and more complex applied knowledge; but above all, it changes the role that evaluation has in improving these learning processes. The usefulness of the evaluation is not only in the ability that it gives us to verify the final performance of the student's learning, but that it should also serve as a training element, which is integrated into the teaching and learning processes from start to finish. Thus, the evaluation should serve not only to assess whether the student has assimilated knowledge, but also to guide their learning. This in-depth review of the evaluation process also involves thinking about the method and the actors involved in this process. So, against the punitive nature of traditional assessment carried out by the teacher who evaluates a group of students in an exercise of authority, it is necessary to think of alternatives that involve and engage students in their own evaluation process and, therefore, in their own training in order to achieve a lasting learning that will serve them throughout life. In this new evaluation model, the actor who assesses is not only the teacher, but all those involved have a responsibility to participate in the evaluation and self-assessment activities. In this way, evaluating is a shared responsibility, in which neither the teaching nor the learning are stopped. The student must participate in all activities to keep learning. Thus, the evaluation should be understood as a formative and shared activity between teachers and students. This will allow us to definitively know whether or not the teaching objectives, methodology used, resources, assessment, etc. are responding as expected or whether they have to be changed in time to get closer to the fixed goals. All this leads us to consider and to take into account in the process of teaching and learning not only the more technical aspect of evaluation, but also its more human, critical, reflective, formative and negotiating dimension.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

The importance of drawing in the architecture project and its teaching

We start designing working and thinking with our hands. With them, we can shape an external object first and think and develop the architectural project through it. When designing, our hands act as tools that move between the worlds of matter and thought, making it possible to work with our ideas, clarifying them and fixing them up into something buildable. From the drawing, the performing of sketches, models, collages ... we can travel that road made by ideas to enter a world of physical reality through a process in which the actions of thinking, drawing and building continually succeed each other. This article tries to explore the role of our hands when designing in order to learn more about the process of creating the architectural project and the way it is generated, to finally speak about issues interesting for us concerning the way they are taught. Every project comes into existence through a handmade object. Hands move through the paper whiteness, the pencil start fixing strokes on its surface, sometimes fast, sometimes slowly, and sometimes, with different intensities. Shapes yet to be defined, barely sketched, features of forms still emerging... constitute, at the beginning of the project, a series of acts which commence it and will develop in time. During this process, drawing assumes a prominent role, not only as an instrument allowing the representation of the projectual idea itself, making it visible and defining its materialization and construction, but also as an element that generates thinking, as it is through drawing that we can work and think on the idea that originates it. Drawing, writing, building models..., in short, working with your hands consciously, leads us to develop a thinking process in which gaze and hands work together. It would be necessary to claim that action for the teaching of architectural projects as a method of doing and thinking. During the project development, it would be necessary for students to learn how to work with instruments, tools... that resist the achievement of mere projections or mechanical representations of those things before their eyes, to get into the being of things, their presence or their being present. In this respect, and in the field of the architectural project teaching, it is essential to highlight the importance of drawing due to its effectiveness to transmit and express a form of thinking. As Martin Heidegger suggests, our hands are organs for our thinking. When they are not working in order to know or learn, they are thinking. Drawing, building models, sketching... is a matter of “doing” that turns into a way of “thinking” where hands and ideas are joined together as long as the project is carried out. Therefore, the value of drawing lies in its function as a tool for reflection. Designing means to think in a graphic way, to materialise our ideas through our hands to work with them, think about them and, to materialize them once more. Sketches, models, collages, schemes... suitable for every step during the project development allow us to check the different design options, test and error trials. These act as critical instruments that inform about the validity of every decision taken. This is why the project cannot emerge from the mere application of a static, definitely established knowledge, but from a dialectical process between thought and action, gaze and hands. Therefore, we could say that the drawing is an instrument of reflection that allows us to focus our thoughts, to define a support to contain, shape and define them, and to communicate the essence of our ideas, specifying and fixing them to turn them into something buildable. Hence the importance in the development of any project and in his teaching not only of those drawings that shape that graphic documentation enabling the building of architecture in every aspect, but also of the early drawings, sketches, schematic drafts, ideograms and series of images that try to study its context... and already contain the first projectual idea, clear and definitive, anticipating the formalisation of the project and sensing some material, building and structural conditions.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Methodological advances in the analysis, assessment and intervention of industrial landscapes

We are currently witnessing a gradual extension of the concept of heritage. This idea has evolved to encompass landscapes and is even reaching into an area which, until recently, had not received sufficient attention: industrial heritage. This new notion of what constitutes heritage is particularly interesting from a cultural perspective, with the appearance of the term “cultural landscape” which covers landscapes produced by industrial decay, among other things. This extended concept of heritage, which is gradually growing both quantitatively and qualitatively, has not only added extra complexity to the limits of what is considered heritage, but is also bringing an evolution in the methodological parameters used for analysis, protection and action, from a 19th-Century modern scientific perspective towards a more epistemological, ideological, political, cultural and technical approach. The object of this paper is to study and analyze the theoretical principles and developments made at international level in relation to environmental research, from the second half of the 20th century to the present day. More specifically, we will focus on the methodologies which seek to overcome the obsolescent tools and methods used in landscape analysis. For this purpose, we will pay particular attention to the methodologies that go beyond considering landscapes as mere visual phenomena, to treat them as an intimate and complex relationship between people and a place. The British methodology Landscape Character Assessment will have a special place in this study. However, this interest in LCA does not mean that we will be ignoring other major methodological contributions. This method review will ultimately enable us to define the basic supporting pillars for the development of a specific methodology to be used in the analysis and intervention of industrial landscapes produced by industrial decay.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Innovation and training in the teaching of architectural projects

The architecture project is first of all an autonomous fact linked to a creative process. Thought and creation are intimately related in every project process and, although architecture materializes through constructive and material systems, it is only possible to conceive it through the construction of thought. For this it is necessary, on the one hand, the knowledge of guidelines, rules and objectivable principles of the architectural discipline but, on the other hand, it needs, like any creative act, to develop in a dialectical relationship with another type of material that is not specific to this discipline and is part of a personal world, the result of our experience in the world and in which the architecture project most often finds its base or owes all its wealth. It is in this way, that the architecture project acquires values and meanings that are above the objectifiable and the tangible, thus reaching a double dimension: on the one hand, the rational and objective linked to a series of conventional knowledge, regulated and specific to the architectural discipline that evokes that character of the most technical project; and, on the other hand, the subjective and personal, common in every creative act, related to an intimate world that refers to that more subjective, unstable and unpredictable character of it. Both factors acquire the same and decisive importance in the development of the project. Likewise, they constitute two aspects equally essential for their understanding. However, it is the most objective, rational and easily transmissible aspects that become, in most of the times, in the center of attention during the development of the project and in its teaching or in the object of study of research works, forgetting or leaving aside that highly subjective component that it possesses.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

New teaching strategies in the teaching of the architectural project

Today we will observe the need to rethink the teaching and learning models at Schools of Architecture, reconsidering the ways of teaching and learning, attending not only to what we want to teach, but also to how we are going to teach with the objective of moving from the traditional model of transmission of knowledge from the teacher to the student, to a model based on the development of competences in the student. In this sense, the teaching of architectural design should step away from the attitude that is still prevalent in many schools, consisting of conveying predetermined teaching or a closed and complete architectural culture, which attempts to exhaust all the avenues of knowledge, showing a strict and infallible method. What is needed, though, is an active and plural education that considers the complexity of architecture, based on ongoing research and part of an open, flexible and dynamic disciplinary discourse. An education that allows students to develop skills and generate new knowledge from the creation of learning situations which stimulate independent learning, facilitate subsequent ongoing training and enable a more critical and profound intellectual development. Undoubtedly, students must acquire lots of knowledge and skills, and there are many learning processes which must be simultaneously present of their training. In this sense, this paper aims to define a series of teaching strategies that aim to establish a teaching of Architecture oriented more to show an attitude towards the project, to encourage, stimulate and involve students in their own process of learning, helping them to develop their capacity to learn to learn. A training oriented more than the pursuit of results to focus on the processes that lead to them.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

INNOVATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICT) AS A SUPPORT FOR THE DEVELOPMENT AND PROMOTION OF CREATIVE THINKING PROCESSES IN UNIVERSITY TEACHING

Nowadays, we are attending an expansion of the Innovation and Communication Technologies (ICT) in various aspects of life, including the teaching one. In the same way, we observe how the importance of the creativity’s role has increased, being declared one of the most important skills in the educational context of the 21st century. The importance of this creative component in the formation of people entails a completely new approach to teaching. Nowadays, teaching can use many means to enhance the development of creativity formulated through educational objectives. Among these diverse means, technological, audiovisual and computer tools occupy a privileged place. Innovation and Communication Technologies (ICT), due to its multidimensional nature, can offer numerous ways to enhance the development of creativity. These innovative didactic tools generate a high motivating potential due to their great appeal, and they constitute a propitious occasion to provoke significant learning. In this sense, the main objective of this paper is to reflect on those educational strategies that improve the teaching of university teaching staff based on the use of ICTs in the teaching-learning process from an enriching perspective, as well as making the most of the opportunities that these resources provide not only for the achievement of pedagogical objectives or the improvement of student learning, but also to encourage and develop their creativity. To do so, it is proposed to reflect on a training model that supports, through these technological tools, a proactive approach to creativity in the classroom that includes the presence of favorable attitudes on the part of the teacher and the development of skills related to the thinking and the creative behavior in the students.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

New challenges for the teaching of architecture

The implementation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) opens us to a new scenario marked by a training model increasingly complex and extensive in time that differs considerably from that which has been done so far and that makes it necessary to think again University. In this context, it is necessary to review the teaching model of the current Schools of Architecture: defining new strategies and reflection mechanisms according to the expectations of the degree and the postgraduate in our country and reconsidering the ways of teaching and learning, taking into account not only the what you want to teach, but also to how you are going to teach in order to move from the traditional model of transmission of knowledge from teacher to student, to a model based on the development of competences in the student, in which knowledge stops be stable and scarce to demand its expansion and update constantly throughout life and where the educational institution loses its exclusivity when transmitting knowledge and information. All this makes it necessary for the student to reach the capacity to acquire all those knowledge, skills and attitudes that will require throughout his life in his academic or professional training becoming the true protagonist of his own training. For this, it is necessary to think of a teaching of architecture that defines more flexible learning pathways that support ongoing training. A teaching oriented more to show an attitude towards the project, to encourage, stimulate and involve students in their own learning process helping them to develop their capacity to learn to learn. In short, a teaching is demanded in which the training on information predominates with the aim of creating learning situations that facilitate a subsequent continuous training and that allow a more critical and deep intellectual development that enables to generate knowledge.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Reflections about the creative process of the architectural project and its teaching

This paper aims to reflect on the importance of the eye in the creative process of architectural projects. All creation is based on a watchful eye, which acts as an instrument of knowledge and reflection; an active and creative eye that contains a thought. But creation is also in the hands of those who put these thoughts down onto paper and materialise them. In this sense, teaching architectural design should fundamentally consider educating the eye, so that students develop a perceptual ability allowing them to address all kinds of architectural projects creatively. Educating the eye therefore becomes the main goal of teaching architectural design. Learning how to see is essential. This learning calls on the eye as an instrument of knowledge and analysis of the reality to be transformed. An eye with a purpose not just of looking at something for the sake of it, but of seeing it, of seeing it to learn and to become aware of the world surrounding us, whether physically, emotionally or intellectually. An eye that focusses on the reality around them in a conscious and attentive way in order to provide the information to work with when it comes to designing, both from an objective and rational outside world and an intimate and personal world. A creative eye, capable of creating and transforming reality. An eye that involves the action of thinking. But above all, an eye that acts in coordination with hands that work as instruments of knowledge, that move between the world of matter and thought, and that allow this world of ideas to be unearthed, spilling thoughts onto paper, specifying them and fixing them until turning them into something that can be built. In the teaching of architectural design, it would be necessary to foster this action as a way of doing and thinking.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

The teaching of the architecture project: new methodological aspects

In the new scenario that opens the European Higher Education Area is necessary for the teaching of architecture in Spain to position through the definition of strategies and mechanisms for continuous reflection that takes you to adapt to new changing situations, the result of a world and a global knowledge society in continuous evolution, and to do so as well, from the quality and excellence. This raises the need to define more flexible learning pathways that enable lifelong learning support, and to reconsider ways of teaching and learning in schools of architecture attending not only to what they want to teach, but also how to teach. This refers to a teaching-oriented architecture to create learning situations and the most important information is the training

Formative and shared evaluation in Architecture learning

En la actualidad nos encontramos con un escenario marcado por un modelo formativo cada vez más complejo y extenso en el tiempo, que difiere considerablemente del que se ha venido realizando hasta ahora. Esto hace necesario repensar los actuales procesos de evaluación, los cuales se van a ver afectados por fuertes cambios. Éstos vienen determinados no sólo por el paso del tradicional énfasis puesto en la enseñanza y en el docente, a la importancia que se le asigna en la actualidad al aprendizaje y al alumno como centro de este proceso de aprendizaje; sino que también cambia el objeto de evaluación, al pasar de la adquisición de una serie de conocimientos académicos al desarrollo de unas competencias y la obtención de unos conocimientos básicos y aplicados más complejos; pero, sobre todo, cambia el papel que la evaluación tiene en la mejora de dichos procesos de aprendizaje.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec