Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
Department of Architecture, Sa.C., Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran.
2
Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Architectural Technology, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
3
Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Sa.C., Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran.
4
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Sciences, Sa.C., Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran.
Abstract
To train motivated and successful students in the field of architectural engineering, the education of this field should be such that these students will be successful and capable in their real field of work after graduation. It can be said that this is the most important issue in creating academic motivation in architectural students, and their academic motivation can be improved by empowering and preparing them to face the challenges of the professional environment outside the university. Blended education is essentially a type of educational approach that combines various traditional and new educational methods to achieve better results in this regard and to cover the disadvantages and weaknesses of each. Therefore, blended education, as a new approach based on the diversity and variety of teaching and learning methods using electronic technologies and various tools, tries to improve motivation and fill the gaps in current education, and this is the difference between the present research and other research in this field, which has not been done in this way so far. It even seems that the use of blended learning in this study is necessary in implementing educational programs, because otherwise, there is no integration between classroom learning and the professional environment, and learning situations will be focused only on the classroom. In the field of architectural engineering education, graduates of this field have not had much success in practice and in the professional environment. The main cause of this problem can be attributed to the weakness of students in technical and engineering abilities, which is related to the field of building technology courses. On the other hand, among the various factors affecting the level of student learning and having better performance, academic motivation can play an important role in this field. One of the main problems of architecture students in building technology courses is the weakness in the ability to visualize, convert ideas into architectural designs, draw executive plans, and see designs in three dimensions. Therefore, teaching the principles of topics through a blended method can pave the way for constructivist learning and eliminate the shortcomings of architecture students. The purpose of this study is to examine and test the teaching method of building technology courses and its application in promoting personal enthusiasm and academic motivation of students in the field of architectural engineering. In this regard, according to the objectives of this study, the most important course in the field of building technology, namely the technical design course, was selected for a case study in this study. The technical design course deals with how a building is constructed, and also, according to the prerequisites of this course, the student practices the relationship between architecture, structure, and facilities in this course. To solve the problems in the technical design course in this study, an educational model has been designed that includes a combined model of four methods of creating a constructivist environment, the scientific rotation method, the project and problem-solving method, and finally the Building Information Modeling (BIM) method, and according to it, the technical design course of the building was presented to one of two classes. The statistical population of this study includes undergraduate students of architectural engineering in Iranian universities who have taken the technical design course of the building in the final year of the course. Accordingly, the subjects were selected from all final-year undergraduate students of architectural engineering at Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj Branch. The reason for choosing this case study was the years of teaching of the first, third and fourth authors of the study in this university unit and their familiarity with the educational environment and students in order to collect data as accurately as possible and conduct research tests. The number of students in the technical design course was 36, of which 21 were boys and 15 were girls, who were equally divided into two experimental and control groups. The Macquarie and Munson Standard Questionnaire (RPII) was used to conduct the personal enthusiasm test, and the Harter Educational Motivation Questionnaire (HEMS) was used to conduct the academic motivation test. In this study, a quasi-experimental research design was carried out with a control group (control) and an experimental group, using pre-test and post-test. Since two technical design classrooms were used for the experimental and control groups in this study and the samples were not random, it was necessary to ensure that the groups were similar in terms of the variables under study before conducting the experiment. Therefore, at the beginning of the academic semester, pre-tests were conducted with t-tests with two independent samples to compare the level of personal enthusiasm and academic motivation of students in the two groups in the building technical design course. For the control group, the teaching method was implemented according to the architectural engineering syllabus approved by the Ministry of Science. However, for the experimental group, the teaching method was based on the educational model proposed in this study. To find out the effectiveness of the proposed educational method in this study, t-tests with two paired samples were used in both groups at the beginning and end of the academic semester. The theoretical foundations section of the research was conducted in a library manner, and for the tests, SPSS software and descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were used. In the pre-test stage, a two-sample t-test with two independent samples was used, and in the post-test stage, a two-sample t-test with two paired or correlated samples was used. The theoretical foundations section of the research was conducted using a library method, and for the tests section, SPSS software, descriptive statistics, and inferential statistics were used. In the pre-test stage, a two-sample t-test with two independent samples was used, and in the post-test stage, a two-sample t-test with two paired or correlated samples was used. By conducting pre-tests at the beginning of the academic semester, the findings showed that the two groups did not have any significant differences in terms of personal enthusiasm and academic motivation. Next, a t-test with two paired samples was conducted for the experimental group. By applying the proposed educational model for the experimental group, the academic motivation at the end of the semester was significantly different from the beginning of the semester in the technical design course (Sig.= .043, t= -2.247). Therefore, the proposed educational model for the technical design course was able to have positive effects in increasing students' academic motivation in this course. However, by conducting a post-test at the end of the academic semester, the research findings showed that the application of the proposed educational model was effective in improving the academic motivation of the students in the experimental group and had a significant advantage over the other group. But regarding personal enthusiasm, the significance level was about 0.1, which is a significant number, and the average ratings of the students in the experimental group were noticeably better than the control group, which means that the educational model proposed for the experimental group also had an impact on personal enthusiasm. The results of the study showed that the use of the educational method proposed in this study was effective in improving the academic motivation of the students in the experimental group and had a significant advantage over the control group. The use of technology and methods such as building information modeling and the use of architectural design software, scientific tours, etc. that support teaching and classes improve the level of motivation and learning in students. The use of virtual software environments helps students to significantly increase their motivation by using attractive and graphic visual spaces and by involving the five senses in it. Given the three-dimensional nature of the design and drawing in the software, solving problems and assignments raised in class was much more attractive for the students, and learning a very important software also created more motivation in them. Therefore, the proposed educational model had a direct impact on the level of students' academic motivation and indicated the improvement of students' ability to perform technical design assignments. Finally, it can be said that the success of the proposed educational method in the technical design course has led to the improvement of students' academic motivation and building information modeling in the context of a constructivist educational environment will be effective in improving their ability in professional and practical areas.
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