Designing student learning outcomes in undergraduate architecture education: Frameworks for assessment

On the cusp of transition to the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) 2009 Conditions for Accreditation, and at the juncture of higher education's transition into a culture of assessment, this paper addressesthe rationale and frameworks for the design of student learningobjectives. The circumstances of undergraduate architectural education are the primary target here, but the same principles will apply to graduatelearning as well. The discussion is itself framed by a comparison to aset of model student learning objectives published by the American Psychology Association, and is structured within the conventionalplanning model of mission, values, goals, objectives, tactics, and strategies. For the purpose of discussion, the authors propose severalhypothetical examples

Affecting Change in Architectural Education

Architecture concerns not so much an explicit body of transmittable knowledge and protocols as it does a set of implicit understandings, sensitivities and sensibilities. The education of an architect therefore concerns the mission of endowing candidates with those implicit traits. This is not to say that architects do not possess and wield prodigious amounts of explicit cognitive knowledge, because they certainly do. But that explicit component of architectural know-how is actually vested in and deployed by the architect not so much because the knowledge has been invented, discovered, or developed by architects; but rather because they have assimilated it from other disciplines in a special way that gives architects adductive and hermeneutic insight into vast, detailed, and complex design challenges. Engineers make better machines, artists make more meaningful artifacts, and psychologists provide better human environments; but architects are trained to see the underlying opportunity and potential celebration of how those constituent menus might become a feast. In any unresolved complex of space, material and form, architects grasp a unique essence in how they perceive the "happily ever after” of what it might be and how that vision might be made whole and concrete. By the time a student of architecture is fully indoctrinated, this grasp of an underlying ideal essence is so potent that it becomes the student's identity... and the purpose of that insight becomes an irresistible intention

The Role of Environmental Attitudes in Trip Spending for Motor Racing Event Attendees: Initial Findings and Future Directions

Sustainability within the event industry is becoming increasingly important. This study used the revised New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) to assess sustainability attitudes of racing event attendees at a series of major racing events in Monterey, California, USA. Racing events were specifically chosen for this research based on their reputation of being an event type that is not popularly considered sustainable. The NEP scale assessment provided the foundation for an examination of the relationships between sustainability attitudes and trip spending as well as a variety of demographic characteristics. Attendees were found to have similar NEP scores to other event and non-event research. However, an inverse relationship was found between environmental attitudes and per-person trip spending. Results provide practical and academic implications within event sustainability and marketing as well as within tourism and sustainability

Thoughts toward a clinical database of architecture: evidence, complexity, and impact

This paper examines how architecture is building a clinical database similar to that of law and medicine and is developing this database for the purposes of acquiring complex design insight. This emerging clinical branch of architectural knowledge exceeds the scope of everyday experience of physical form and can thus be shown to enable a more satisfying scale of design thinking. It is argued that significant transformational kinds of professional transparency and accountability are thus intensifying. The tactics and methods of this paper are to connect previously disparate historical and contemporary events that mark the evolution of this database and then to fold those events into an explanatory narrative concerning clinical design practice. Beginning with architecture's use of precedent (Collins 1971), the formulation of design as complex problems (Rittel and Webber 1973), high performance buildings to meet the crisis of climate change, social mandates of postindustrial society (Bell 1973), and other roots of evidence, the paper then elaborates the themes in which this database is evolving. Such themes include post-occupancy evaluation (Bordass and Leaman 2005), continuous commissioning, performance simulation, digital instrumentation, automation, and other modes of data collection in buildings. Finally, the paper concludes with some anticipated impacts that such a clinical database might have on design practice and how their benefits can be achieved through new interdisciplinary relations between academia and practice

Understanding the Impacts of Festivals on Resident Attendees Before and During COVID-19: A First Look at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival

Although festivals and events have been identified as a growth segment within tourism, smaller cultural festivals have received much less attention. These smaller cultural festivals aim to bring cultural contributions and increased well-being to attendees and the host community in addition to their economic value. More specifically, queer film festivals have increased in number and size within the last decade and have an important history and purpose within the LGBT2Q+ community. As such, the current study investigated the attendees of the 2019 & 2020 Vancouver Queer Film Festival (VQFF), Western Canada’s largest queer film festival. The survey instrument asked attendees questions about subjective well-being, cultural/educational impacts, community benefits, future programming, and demographics. Preliminary results comparing demographic, behavioural, perceived benefit, and outcome characteristics between the 2019 in-person version and the 2020 virtual pandemic version of VQFF are discussed. Industry and academic implications and areas for future study are also considered

Rethinking Resident Perceptions of Tourism in British Columbia, Canada

This joint academic/practitioner report segments British Columbia, Canada residents to provide destination managers with new ways to better understand resident perceptions of tourism. The data collection was conducted in April and May of 2022 and had a total of 2,265 valid responses. It was also a practical objective to conduct this research in a manner that is repeatable in jurisdictions beyond British Columbia. This report has confirmed five distinct categories of residents’ perceptions toward tourism, including socio-cultural, economic, environmental, job/career, and Indigenous impacts. In addition to the categories of impacts, a cluster analysis has revealed six clusters of residents based on the five categories: Tourism Ambassadors, Tourism Supporters, Socio-cultural and Tourism Economic Supporters, Neutrals, Concerns about Careers and Environment, and Tourism Adversaries. Managerial implications and opportunities for future destination management and governance are discussed