Rethinking design studios as an integrative multi-layered collaboration environment

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses experimental studios within an incremental collaboration framework to better understand the opportunities of peer‐to‐peer learning and student collaboration. Using qualitative methods including observation, interviews, peer-evaluations, and descriptive assessments of student work, the study revealed that collaboration can lead to both progression and regression in overall learning processes depending on the approach (mandatory/self-directed), group composition, and how students arrive at common decisions. The findings suggest that a strategically designed studio structure combined with multiple, diversified collaboration strategies are essential to give students successful learning experiences in both explicit and tacit forms.

Introduction

Discourse on the importance of collaboration has entered into the larger academic realm across disciplines. In a broader society context, this phenomenon is not unrelated to socioeconomic, environmental, and political issues that are becoming increasingly complex and complicated while the domains of expertise are becoming more separate and specialized. Within this context, collaboration in academia refers to the essential need to interact and communicate with people in different disciplinary and professional fields. This is a core value that enables a holistic understanding of problems and integrative problem-solving in interconnected systems. Collaboration can be found in various forms depending on the level of formality, actors, and purposes. It can be simple networks, cooperative teamwork, partnerships, or strategic coalitions. In the context of cross-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary collaboration (Stember 1991), the level of effort and expectations for collaboration may be different in terms of the interchange of knowledge, discipline-specific collaboration methods, and desired collaborative outcomes.

In design disciplines, studios provide an important environment for collaborative learning. A design studio is a unique pedagogical format that has been widely adopted in the curricula of design fields (Forsyth, Lu, and McGirr 1999; Long 2012b; Crowther 2013). Students in studio settings follow curriculum sequencing to build skills and approaches. Unlike other types of studios (e.g., art and craft) where self-expression and individuality are encouraged during the product-making process (Taylor and Ladkin 2014), design studios in landscape architecture, architecture, and planning tend to pursue more collective and comprehensive projects and value design objects (e.g., landscapes, buildings, public/private spaces) to the shared benefit of others. Many landscape architecture studios, for instance, have adopted a service learning method as the framework for their design practices. These projects often involve communities and stakeholders as project partners (Forsyth, Lu, and McGirr 1999).

Although recent literature presents a new trend in the design pedagogical method, peer and professional critiques remain a primary pedagogical tool to support studio teaching and learning practices (Gul, Gunday, and Afacan 2018; Salama 1995; Oh et al. 2013). Critiques serve as an essential procedure to interact with students and evaluate their work. However, the way critiques are delivered in studios using an apprenticeship model has been criticized, especially in architectural education. Thus, recent research has focused on how to address these challenges (Schön 1987; Teymur 1992; Salama and Wilkinson 2007; Nicol and Pilling 2000; Hardy and Teymur 1996).

It is widely recognized that design studios are an ideal environment to teach design as a creative and artistic act (Salama and Wilkinson 2007) and to explore diverse design inquiries for studio projects (Cho and Cho 2014). While lower-level studios focus more on fundamental design principles and training for basic but vital analogue and digital technologies to address simple design problems on smaller sites, upper-level studios are often designed to solve more complex issues caused by either the extent of the project site or multiple concerns. For instance, studios for urban design or regional planning generally require a holistic and integrative design process through synthesis of collective learning from a wide spectrum of disciplines and professional practices (Kim 2009). In many cases, design studios involve in-depth (Bowring 1997) and a rich field of research (Salama and Wilkinson 2007) giving students opportunities to explore a specific design issue in detail in a broader research framework. In addition, urban design studios in landscape architecture have increasingly emphasized contemporary issues that characterize our environment and society such as climate change (Cerra 2016), homelessness, and the legacy of urban sprawl. Other parameters such as social relations (Dutton 1991; Boyer and Mitgang 1996) and the cross-cultural process of place-making (Salama, O’Reilly, and Noschis 2002; Hill 2005) add to the complexity of systems, issues, approaches and methods in a teaching design studio. As a legitimate constituent of a problem-based learning method, the studio method serves as a dynamic place where students learn to experiment on their own, teach each other, and use all studio members as resources in the research. In studio-based learning, students are expected to iteratively generate and refine design solutions, communicate effectively, and collaborate with others (Cennamo et al. 2011). Wilson and Zamberlan (2017) cite the studio setting as a critical dimension of creativity where what students identify as the phenomenon of ‘press’ – the vital part of an environment involving factors for creativity generation such as person (agent), process, and product – actually happens (Rhodes 1961). For students’ own design projects in a design studio, students learn experientially with periodic critiques and collective reviews from instructors and other members of the group.

Studio pedagogy stems from French traditions associated with the Ecole des Beaux Art (Kim 2009) tracing back to the seventeenth century. Beaux Arts is characterized by order, symmetry, and formal design, and served as a solid foundation of formal architectural education (Salama and Wilkinson 2007). An alternative approach to formal design education was the Bauhaus model in Germany, which emerged in the late nineteenth century in response to the technological developments that resulted from the Industrial Revolution. Both classical systems dominated design pedagogy in the past and still influence studios emphasizing traditional principles of formal design. Other viewpoints stressing utilitarian, pragmatic, functional and social aspects of design have also been incorporated into the creation of the built environment and urbanization process. These viewpoints have strongly affected the approaches to the study and design of cities, towns, communities, and other physical environments today. Despite the substantial differences in these approaches, the design studio has become the main forum for knowledge acquisition, assimilation, and creative exploration and interaction (Salama and Wilkinson 2007).

Compared to theoretical academic courses, design studios require a significantly different setup to make them operational (Pak and Verbeke 2013). Since design knowledge is difficult to externalize and is more tacit (Polanyi 1966), a flexible learning environment such as the design studio can produce both explicit and implicit learning at different stages of the design process. Studio education can provide a desirable place to foster soft skills such as communication, decision-making, and collaborative performance among the various actors involved in design challenges. Thus, instructors have attempted to bring collaborative work into studios. However, collaborative work is often not the norm in many studio classes. Rather, individual and independent inquiries are prevalent in studios as a typical alternative to the collaborative problem-solving process. This is due in part to the easy adoption of the iconic ‘fine arts’ model for studios that accepts individual self-expression. It is also due in part to the frequent tendency to avoid collaboration in a studio as it can be considerably more complex and resisted by the students, even though real-life practice of design requires collaboration in the field. The mode of collaboration varies depending on the nature of the design project and the intent of the course instructor, but collaboration focuses mainly on being interdisciplinary (Harrison 2007; Jutraž and Tadeja 2014; Kim, Ju, and Lee 2015), encouraging community participation (Harrison 2007), and using technology (Del Rio and Levi 2009; Shaffer 1997) to promote collaborative outcomes. Aside from adding more design participants, it is also important to frame collaborative activities with a delicate configuration and calibration that can be adjusted and monitored as the project progresses and that can promote student learning.

Early design studios, and even modern design studios in certain fields of higher education, exhibit persistent traditions and unilateral relationships (Schön 1987) may hinder student-teacher interaction and collaboration among students. Thus, studio environments remain a powerful component of design education enabling students to have highly reflective experiences (Mewburn 2011). However, the challenges for design educators are to overcome the growing trends of an individualistic studio culture and overreliance on technologies, and to fully exploit the potential of peer learning and active collaboration in contemporary studios (Roberts 2016). This paper analyzes experimental design studios where incremental collaboration strategies were applied to enhance individual and group representation and reflection within a collaborative structure of the design process. Given that the potential of peer learning is not fully exploited in contemporary educational practices (Pak and Verbeke 2013), this paper seeks to develop a collaborative teaching model through a series of experiments using a new teaching method in urban and regional design studios.

Studio collaboration

Need for collaboration

The value of student collaboration in academic courses is not new, but it has been stressed more in contemporary design education as a core skill to better prepare students for the realities of the professional work environment (Lauche et al. 2008). The need and demand for collaboration in a design studio involve both internal and external factors. Internal factors include individuals’ characteristics such as the tendency towards individuality (Erbil and Dogan 2012; Fister 2012), personality (intro/extroverted characteristics; Jarl 2016), ways to reveal design intent, and the ability to maximize learning through synchronous collaboration. In addition, across disciplines in higher education (including design programmes), student demographics have become more diverse in terms of gender, age, and cultural background (Guest 2017; Hainline et al. 2010). This shift also requires studios to be a collaborative environment where diverse individuals can effectively communicate to enhance learning, improve design, and promote career outcomes.

External factors impacting design collaboration include a changing society where newer and more intricate urban problems continue to emerge (Fisher 2005). To address these design challenges entangled in a complex urban system (Roberts 2016), collective knowledge through the collaborative process is inevitable for students to acquire appropriate skills (Kendall 2007). Collaboration training and reflection-in-action (Schön 1987) are also important in design studios because they mirror the professional design practice where designers across disciplines work together alongside non-design experts to solve ever-changing challenges in real-world environments. Jutraz and Zupancic (2018) stress active collaboration involving various actors especially for integrated projects. Collaborative teamwork from the early stage of the design process facilitates knowledge synthesis, produces innovative work, and enables all players to deliver an integrated project.

A recent survey (2017) shows that professional landscape architects work with many collaborators with diverse expertise. Respondents indicated that 60% of their collaborators were engineers and 34% were architects. It also revealed that a number of other disciplines including horticulturists, environmentalists, artists, and ecologists played important roles in their projects. Other partners involved in the process include planners, developers, development consultants, archaeologists, forestry consultants, lawyers, policymakers, municipalities, infrastructure engineers, and geotechnical consultants. Many other disciplinary experts may also contribute to the collaborative process in pre-, present, and post-project periods. Some of these disciplines, especially artists and scientists, are often not tied to the constraints of clients and project managers but represent one dimension of a project, which can be an important challenge in collaboration with landscape architects. In addition, collaboration leadership plays an important role as there needs to be a discipline that can pose an interesting challenge in cross-, multi-, and trans-disciplinary work. In participatory design projects, landscape architects even work with stakeholders such as citizens, site neighbours, community organizations, site users, and any group of people who has an interest in the project. This last type of collaboration differs from interdisciplinary collaboration and requires a different set of collaboration skills to create effective and efficient communication with lay people and to understand stakeholders’ capacity for successful collaboration.

Landscape architects undertake a wide variety of planning and design projects that require varying degrees of collaboration among many different entities. While collaboration has become a principal value for different strands of practice and scholarship, strategies remain elusive for bridging education and practice in our efforts to affect change towards more sustainable design. Since collaboration is the only way to understand incredibly complex and layered projects that require various aspects of knowledge and training, having students experience collaborative education can foster appropriate skills and attitudes towards collaborative projects in professional practice. Allied design disciplines such as planning and architecture also emphasize the importance of collaboration in education. The Planning Accreditation Board (PAB) cites collaboration as one of its profession’s core values along with stewardship, communication, and leadership (http://www.planningaccreditationboard.org). Likewise, the American Institute of Architecture Students (Koch 2002) report indicates that design students are cognizant of the values of studio collaboration and regard the lack of collaboration as a needed area of improvement in their academic settings. Kim (2009) also argues that urban design educators need to bring social components into design studios through increased collaboration. These disciplinary standards and expectations are a manifestation of the academic efforts to train future design professionals (e.g., landscape architects, architects, urban designers, and planners) and create a shared form of practice. Whether it is an urban or landscape project, instructors must make contemporary design education relevant in actual contexts and realities that often require hybrid practices (Corner 2006; Sargın and Savaş 2012). It is important, however, to acknowledge that collaboration practices in an academic setting and a real-world professional design setting are critically different. The main goals of academic studios are learning and skill-building whereas project outcomes are pre-eminent in professional settings. Therefore, collaboration in academic studios are promoted only as one of the skills students need to develop through learn-to-fail and fail-to-learn processes (Long 2012a) in contrast to the collaboration practices required to produce and benefit project outputs in professional settings. It is also notable that the scope of collaboration in academic setting is often limited to experiencing the dynamics of collaboration leadership as in professional settings.

Practical models for studio collaboration

Early modes of studio teaching, which were mainly observed in early architectural education, followed the master-apprentice model where instructors had heavy control over the progression of students’ work, and individual work was promoted more than collaborative work. In some circumstances where design ideas and values were being taught by laissez faire leaders, collaborative activities among peers occurred more frequently in fluid settings (Kim 2009). In 21st century academic design studios, no single studio pedagogy model is predominant but plural, open-ended, and student-centred approaches are often employed and implemented. These approaches are designed to support active learning (Poerschke et al. 2010; Carpenter et al. 2013).

Aside from the studio instructor’s role, the mechanisms of how intellectual processes are formed affect dynamic, interactive communication in similar ways. As an approach to design thinking in a collaborative studio, one can consider the need for both divergent thinking processes and convergent thinking processes. A divergent approach allows as many different ideas as possible and is frequently employed as a method of collaboration. Conversely, convergent thinking is needed to effectively synthesize those ideas into creative design decisions (Erbil and Dogan 2012) by generating patterns that are not only new but also have utility in terms of the problems they address (Lang 1994). In a studio with student collaboration, the question becomes how to apply both approaches so they are aligned with different stages of a holistic design process.

Collaboration and creativity

Another key priority in successful studio learning is to develop students’ creative capacity in their design processes (Robinson 2000). Creativity is developed as a confluence of different dimensions. Rhodes (1961) proposed four components (i.e., person, process, product and press) as integral factors in building creativity. In this 4Ps theory, the terms are defined as follows: (1) person: cognitive abilities, personality traits and biographical experiences; (2) process: the methodology that produces a creative product; (3) product: the communication of a unique, novel and useful idea or concept; and (4) press: the environment where creative ideas are produced. In design and planning studios, educators begin to recognize the importance of both the process and person in creative studio practices. (De La Harpe et al. 2009). Although the relationship between the embodiment of creativity and the extent of collaboration may not be completely linear, the creative process and outcomes that are organically formed through collaborative work have the potential for innovation and serendipitous learning outcomes.

The importance of creativity development in student groups has been stressed by many scholars who view that creativity is both a function of innate individual talent and collaborative exploration through the co-creation process (Wilson and Zamberlan 2017; Zamberlan and Wilson 2015; De La Harpe et al. 2009; Matheson 2006; Nussbaum 2013). The notion of co-creation is generally used as a wide umbrella of activities in various disciplines. In a design studio context, it is defined as a process for joint creation by project participants allowing them to co-construct the work experience to suit their context. It also helps identify a more specific type of value-based collaboration. Physical models are usually good tools for co-creation with professional stakeholders. Co-creation is essential to understand the dynamics of collaboration and creativity in the expanding field of design. Integrating co-creation into design practices adds value to a defined design development process from ideation to production (Nussbaum 2013). As a part of a co-creation activity, co-design is practiced by collaborating designers and non-designers, which allows individual creative ideas to be transformed into creations that have greater value (Wilson and Zamberlan 2017). This is in line with the notion that creativity in contemporary design practice does not result from a sole idea of a ‘lone genius’ (Nussbaum 2013); rather, it increases productivity through idea-processing as collective creativity. In this sense, collaboration is also characterized as ‘collective intelligence’ (Grosse-Hering et al. 2013; Strauss and Fuad-Luke 2008) that allows creativity to surface and be driven by collaborative and interdisciplinary interaction. Wilson and Zamberlan (2017) argue that creativity can be optimally achieved as a product of connectivity, for which we deliberately encourage the cross-fertilization of ideas by actively connecting different facets of practice and bridging them through collaborations. Thus, when teaching design, it is important to provide a collaborative learning environment where social knowledge can be built through design actions and reflections among students in the form of conversations about design situations (Schön 1987; Chiaradia, Sieh, and Plimmer 2017; Pak and Verbeke 2013).

Collaboration space: studio facility

The collaborative space provides an environment for creativity to emerge (Wilson and Zamberlan 2017). The physical variable in this study is an open studio space called the ‘Agriculture Pavilion’ building as the collaborative space for four experimental classes. This facility is in an historic building in an historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places on the campus of Texas Tech University. It has the capacity to accommodate all of the students in the landscape architecture programmes. Although the overall configuration of the studio space has remained the same, the experimental studios have slightly smaller individual work spaces and more communal subspaces than previous studio classes (Figure 1). Each student was given a studio workstation within a designated class-cohort area. Student workstations consist of a rolling, analogue-digital workstation with a 0.6 × 0.9 m drawing area and a second floating laptop monitor stand designed to enable collaboration. This arrangement facilitates efficient workflows and rapid prototyping using central printing and scanning resources. Students also have a filing cabinet and flat file drawer. This studio space offers students networked 11 × 17 colour laser printing, copy and scanning, and large format scanning 24–7. Large format plotting was available in a different building (Landscape Architecture building) and was available to students 24–7 (Texas Tech University Department of Landscape Architecture 2017). The first two studio classes had one shared table and an open floor space as a potential collaboration setup, but students were also encouraged to use other auxiliary facilities such as the university library open spaces called GroupWorks. The last two studios have an additional shared computer workstation and two more collaborative tables to support the anticipated intensity of collaboration activities. A separate quiet space located in a semi-basement of the Pavilion building is available for the last studio to facilitate effective group discussion and critiques. Installing collaborative tables and small shared spaces served as a desirable baseline condition to drive self-directed collaboration that otherwise would not have been possible in a setting with only individual desks.

Figure 1. Floor plan of the studio facility space (TTU Agricultural Pavilion).

The experimental studios

With the total population of 90 students, four studio settings were established to compare the increased level of collaboration requirements and conditions. The first two studios are advanced urban design studios used in the fall semesters of 2015 and 2016, and the other two settings included regional planning and design studios offered in the spring semesters of 2016 and 2017. They were all tandem courses for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students as a part of the core curriculum in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Texas Tech University. The studio sessions are part of the courses paired with weekly lecture sessions to augment design theory knowledge and guide studio work. These courses fostered an understanding of the understructure and functions of multi-scalar urban and regional systems and were sequential in the overall curriculum, with urban design studio preceding regional planning and design. The urban design studio involved a district/neighbourhood scale project with research components and advanced graphic skills. The regional planning and design course extended the spatial scope to a metropolitan region or larger site scale requiring students to utilize GIS techniques and other graphic skillsets they had learned throughout the design curriculum. The design of these studios promoted both individual and collaborative thinking so students could conduct significant inventory and in-depth research for their collective design proposals. This new design was a change from previous courses given the lack of prior emphasis on collaboration. Collaboration with classmates and project stakeholders, as well as full participation in the holistic design process, were expected outcomes in the new course syllabi and assessment rubrics. Although not significant, some of these new studios were influenced by the redesigned curriculum with an integrated course model entitled the Semester of Learning (SoL). SoL shares projects and content between courses, allowing student productivity and quality of work to advance more quickly and consistently (for further information, see Nelson et al. 2018).

Table 1 summarizes the courses for this research including the names, years the courses were offered, number of students enrolled in each course, project sites/clients, and different modes of collaboration for the experimental studios, including linear, inversion, juxtaposition, and permutation models. These models of collaboration were adopted from the biology vocabulary that was especially motivated by the ordering of genes on chromosomes as one organism evolves from another through the reconstruction of the series of chromosomes. Different studio setups examined placement and characteristics of collaboration elements to test students’ learning outcomes and collaboration behaviour. These models were applied to the selected courses in this study and shared with teaching assistants and other faculty. However, students were not made aware of the collaborative models being used to minimize potential impacts on their studio behaviours and to prevent potential bias in the results of the study. The studio projects were chosen in consideration of the scope of the courses as described in the course catalogue as well as the collaboration goals in each course based on the complexity of projects and complexity of collaboration activities. With slight variation, approximately 10 contact hours were planned and conducted with clients and project stakeholders for the studio projects. To understand each project, the courses included guest speakers, guided site tours, office visits, email communication, conference calls, charrettes, professional juries, and/or presentations of final designs and fly-through animations. The details of the collaboration models are described in each studio description below.

Table 1. Four case studios for collaboration experimental settings.

Years offered	Fall 2015	Spring 2016	Fall 2016	Spring 2017
Name of courses	Urban design	Regional planning and design	Urban design	Regional planning and design
Number of undergrad students	9	10	14	33^a
Number of graduate students	8	7	4	5
Project area clients/Partners	New Braunfels, Texas	Albuquerque, New Mexico	San Antonio, Texas	Santa Fe, New Mexico
Presentation format	Video conferencing	Digital presentation	Video conferencing	Digital presentation
Collaboration model	Linear	Inversion	Juxtaposition	Permutation

^aTwo cohorts were merged in the last semester, so there was a large number of enrollees in the same class in the transitional semester as the curriculum changed from 5 years to 4.

Case studio #1

The first case was the 2015 Urban Design Studio with nine fourth-year undergraduate and eight graduate students working on a revitalization design for downtown New Braunfels, Texas. For the first thirteen weeks, students worked independently to complete the initial individual designs on different sites within the project area with feedback provided by instructor and guest jury members. Following the individual work, students worked together for the final three weeks to identify overlapping areas and solve design problems for the in-between areas that the individual design did not cover. The collaboration session was positioned in the entire workflow as linear. In the first thirteen weeks, students went through the entire design process with no formal collaborative outcome requirement. Nevertheless, students implicitly and voluntarily worked together on simple activities such as data sharing. The last two weeks were exclusively dedicated to group work to incorporate individual designs to create a class-level design proposal. This was an additional process after completing the individual design and required a quick application of individual strengths for collaboration. The project process vis-à-vis a linear model of collaboration was structured in a way that mandatory collaboration (shaded bar in Figure 6a) followed the completion of non-collaborative work (white bar in Figure 6a). Several strategies related to the linear nature of the model to produce collaborative products including collaborative activities to process and package the final individual designs. The following three tactics were incorporated to facilitate student collaboration:

Joint design for zonal voids and overlapping areas

During the individual work session, students were required to choose their own areas of interest (AOIs) within one of the study zones (Figure 2). Although collaboration was encouraged during the individual design phase, the actual collaboration culminated when students found the in-between spaces and the overlaps of their sites after completing their individual designs. Students whose sites were in close proximity to one another were asked to derive connective solutions by stitching the zonal voids on a large map emulating the traditional collaboration method (Figure 3). If there were spatial intersections among AOIs, students were asked to create a reconciled design through discussion and compromise. In this way, collaboration experiences were intended to develop design coherence.

Figure 2. Four study zones in project area.

Figure 3. Student collaboration on a big map layered on the floor for project reconciliation.

Publication for design promotion

To develop the collaborative design and promote studio outputs (Figure 4), the class was divided into four teams, with each team taking on graphic development, writing, layout, or publicity. The teams were formed based on careful consideration and class consensus on individuals’ strengths and interests. Each team had three or four undergraduate students and one graduate student who played a leading role in the group. The graduate students played this additional role to fulfill the syllabus requirement for the graduate degree programmes. This collaborative experience was intended to immerse students in a real-world workplace milieu to promote the whole project and help them better understand peer designs as part of a larger designed urban system.

Figure 4. A sample cover of a student-led design booklet (a) and studio promotion article (b).

Student collaboration facilitator

One graduate student who did not belong to any team was assigned as a collaboration facilitator (Figure 5). This role was an intentional device to facilitate collaboration and to serve as a liaison among the student groups and between students and the instructor.

Figure 5. A graduate student facilitating student collaboration.

Figure 6. (a) Linear model; (b) Inversion model; (c) Juxtaposition model; (d) Permutation model.

Case studio #2

The second experimental setting was for the Regional Planning and Design studio with ten undergraduate and seven graduate students working on a project for Bernalillo County (urban region surrounding Albuquerque), New Mexico. Using the inversion model of collaboration, students worked together in a team for the first three weeks doing research, inventory, and analysis of study area (shaded bar in Figure 6b) followed by individual work on the overarching theme of sustainable regional growth (white bar in Figure 6b).

The main difference between the linear and inversion models was the sequencing of collaborative activities of the design process. The linear studio model included a collaborative session at the end of the project to synthesize the completed individual work. In contrast, the collaboration period for the inversion studio model was early in the process for collective ideation, design incubation, and data compilation for shared use in the subsequent individual work session. Unlike the linear model where the aims of individual and collaborative projects were different in nature, the inversion studio model took a hybrid approach for a comprehensive design project that had a short collaboration phase of which outputs informed subsequent individual design. As such, the flow of information transferred into the creativity process. For both models, collaborative tasks were only performed to support the central piece of design development.

Figure 7. ‘Woof-Weft’ fabric model.

Case studio #3

Two separate regional projects were explored in the third experimental studio. Part of the reason we had two different projects was because of the large scale and subsequent complexity issues. All students were familiar with the local regional site in the first project. Thus, having this ‘warm-up’ project helped students feel more comfortable with the larger regional scale. For the first four weeks, five groups of students examined the West Texas region to develop a regional vision by collaboratively going through all phases of planning and design processes (shaded bar in Figure 6c). The second regional project for the Bernalillo County, New Mexico relied solely on individual capabilities (white bar in Figure 6c). Although it was an individual project, non-structured collaboration was expected due to students’ prior collaboration experience. The lessons obtained from the previous collaboration on how to approach regional issues and how to access regional resources were intended to motivate continued collaboration in the individual design project. The juxtaposition model was used as the two projects were different but had parallels in the nature of the project. Thus, the collaborative project was juxtaposed with the individual regional project as a ‘precursor’ of impromptu collaboration.

Case studio #4

The last experimental studio was situated with the permutations model of collaboration pieces that were ordered and arranged in a complex way. This studio was situated in the second year of the regional planning and design studio and embraced all the instruments and mechanisms applied in the previous three collaborative media. As in the juxtaposition model, this studio maintained the basic structure with two separate projects beginning with the West Texas Region and then the primary regional project for Santa Fe, New Mexico. The primary project included two different collaborative work sessions, generating a total of three ‘shaded blocks,’ as shown in Figure 6d.

The intention of this last experimental treatment was to develop a sophisticated course design that would add another layer into a typical collaborative environment. Each individual was exposed to three collaborative settings where they worked with different team members. In the first phase, students collaborated on team-based design proposals for the ‘warm-up’ project using design and planning charrettes. In the second phase, students began working on a new Santa Fe regional project by reshuffling the class into six sectoral groups to work on specific topics including land use/urban growth, watersheds/stormwater, open space/ecosystem, culture/history/art, climate/energy/resilience, and transportation. Each group focused on their designated topic to develop team-based sectoral planning products such as sectoral plan documents and supporting infographics, which were shared and utilized by the class in the next design phase. In the final collaborative phase for design development, the members of the same sectoral group were dispersed into the final design teams representing each sectoral group. Individuals were more acquainted with a particular topical issue than anyone else in the design team. In this group setting, students acted as ‘sectoral managers’ working with other sectoral managers to deploy the knowledge and resources that the individual gained from the previous collaboration phase.

The collaborative learning environment was set up to ensure that each individual could be uniquely positioned in the whole matrix of collaborative actions to better serve other team members and play a parallel but unique role for the given tasks. For example, students took part in the phase-specific collaborative work as an individual researcher, a sectoral planner, or a design team member contributing their collective understanding to develop an integrative master plan. This concept of multi-layered collaborative learning was based on the analogy of a ‘woof-weft’ approach that weaves a fabric in horizontal and vertical (latitudinal and longitudinal) directions to shape organized complexity in executing collaboration manoeuvres (Figure 7).

In Figure 6 (a–d), shaded bars indicate the structured collaboration sessions that required intentional collaboration activities. White bars represent non-structured collaboration periods with allowable self-motivation to co-work. A thicker borderline indicates a comprehensive design project and a thin borderline indicates a non-primary auxiliary project.

Evaluative approach

To understand the modality of collaboration activities within and beyond student groups and the subsequent impacts on student learning outcomes, a variety of qualitative and ethnographic approaches were utilized including the following: studio observation, descriptive assessment of co-production work, non-directive interviews with participating students and faculty, official and unofficial course evaluations, and peer-evaluations at initial, intermediate, and final stages of studio work. Observations were made at both the individual and group levels across the studios of interest with an emphasis on how student attitudes and behaviours changed throughout the collaborative assignments and expectations in the design process. The student work was evaluated by the programme faculty and guest critics using a formal evaluation form (Figure 8) and critiques. Students also had the opportunity to evaluate their peers with 10 questions on a Likert scale and provided comments on their contributions to teamwork. The six questions included regular attendance at group meetings, meaningful contribution to group discussion, punctual completion of group assignments, quality work preparation, cooperative attitude, and a significant contribution to project success. Individual perspectives and experiences of selected interviewees were communicated through a non-structured interview process during and after each semester. From the initial stages of the projects through the final stages, collaborative behavioural patterns and other associated aspects (e.g., the roles of student leaders, emergence of mediators in conflictual circumstances, and decision-making process in the groups) were carefully observed and recorded for each model of the studio experiment.

Through the reviews of these evaluations, the framework of the four models of collaboration (i.e., linear, juxtaposition, inversion, permutation) were explicitly compared and contrasted and assessed in relation to each other. Initially, the baseline of the study was a single individual project. The collaboration models were formulated as a variant of the baseline setting with changes in duration, order, intensity, and type of collaboration activities across the models of collaboration. Several driving factors made the comparison and contrast possible. The first element was the number of projects given during the semester. While the linear and inversion models included only one project section that required collaboration, the juxtaposition and permutation models included two or more design projects. The reasoning behind the decision for one model to have more projects than another was the difference in scope of the courses, complexity of the projects, and depth of the project site context. The second element was the order of the collaboration activities in the overall work sequence. The inversion model had a short collaboration section that came first, whereas the linear model had the same duration of collaboration time but it came at the very end of the work process. Another difference between the linear and the inversion models was the nature of the collaborative work. While the collaboration in the linear model was characterized by non-design actions such as synthesis, packaging, and publicity of individual design outcomes, the inversion model involved advance preparation in the design continuum. A parallel between the juxtaposition and permutation models was in the way that they embraced two separate, distinctive projects in the models. Both models allowed the flow of information from earlier projects to feed back into later projects. However, they were different in that the collaboration in the juxtaposition model was implicitly informed by non-collaborative work, while the primary collaboration project in the permutation model was more directly and strongly influenced by prior collaborative work.

Figure 8. Project evaluation rubric.

Results & discussion

Collaboration patterns in the learning process

Collaboration caused both progression and retrogression in the learning processes depending on the approaches taken (passive vs. active, obligatory vs. autonomous), group composition (designed vs. organic, personal characteristics, professional standards), and ways of arriving at common decisions (e.g., compromise, agreement, group leaders, project coordinator). In most cases across the studios observed for this study, students’ collective learning was evident in diverse groups with mixed backgrounds, abilities, and personalities. For example, the groups with students coming from architecture and natural science fields brought their knowledge and unique skillsets into various design options. Likewise, groups with different ages and levels of students (e.g., a graduate student or nontraditional students) but with mostly conventional, undergraduate students showed inspired progression in the learning process. As for personal characteristics, the groups with extrovert students tended to collaborate more easily than those with introvert students even though all members were given equal expectations. Although outgoing students played a somewhat more active role in initiating or facilitating collaborative work, personality type was not a defining factor influencing collective learning. Groups with extreme introverts (quiet and passive) or extreme extroverts (impulsive) did not help the collaboration process as much as groups with both personality types.

The pedagogical approaches for active collaboration such as mandatory collaborative deliverables and expectations for collaboration articulated on the syllabi and problem statements helped students learn more and better through collaborative opportunities that otherwise might have been missed. However, self-motivated collaboration also occurred among students. Having students take on various roles (e.g., collaboration facilitator for the case studio #1, design booklet coordinator for case studios #2 and #3, and the shifting roles of all members in studio #4) streamlined the seemly intricate collaborative learning process.

In terms of group formation, self-organization had a positive impact on most occasions leading to group members’ ownership of decision making. The only caveat of this approach was the imbalanced concentration of students’ skillsets within the student groups. As an alternative, an online tool was used that randomly formed groups. Although this method saved time and eased the group forming process, it was not as effective as self-organization in terms of group members actively participating in collaborative work. Another approach involved instructor intervention where instructors carefully reviewed each individual’s academic background, design skillsets, personal strengths, level of independence, and other aspects to gauge the best possible combination of the group. It took a considerable amount of time to create groups with a mix of these attributes, but they resulted in better group performance and team deliverables than the other two methods.

How peers arrived at common decisions varied by group. The decisions and work choices in multiple phases of the design process were made through different approaches: (1) through leadership, where group leaders selected their own initiatives; (2) through a flat approach to collaboration with repetitive discussions and compromise between group members; or (3) through a combination of the two mechanisms. It is notable that collaborative behaviours and group learning translated into individualized learning outcomes and ultimately reinforced students’ soft-skill abilities.

There were also signs of retrogression in the collaborative learning process, especially in groups with homogeneous personalities and those with heterogeneous but strong, opposing characteristics. While having a group leader facilitated collaboration, in general, over-dominant leadership negatively affected team productivity as much as a lack of leadership. In fact, having a leader who dominated the group often led to dogmatic and controlled decisions, whereas seemingly quiet groups had latent potential for active leaders. As for the pace of collaborative learning progression, the juxtaposition model was the most useful compared to other models of collaboration, while the retrogressive learning pattern was most noticeable in the permutation model. Some example comments included:

I like group work with upper classmen because they were able to teach me new things about mapping and LA design. – A student from the studio with the juxtaposition model

Working with 5 other people made it very hard to compromise on a design and took up most of our time. – A student from the studio with the permutation model

Team dynamics vs. drama

Various factors influenced the dynamics of group interaction (Kress and Sadler 2014). Basic settings, expectations, and requirements for collaboration as a pedagogical focus were initial factors that prompted group interaction, and were found in all four studios. The increased level of complexity of the problems (e.g., last studio with the permutation model) also produced strong team dynamics in the fast-paced workflows. More importantly, when participants found ‘design moments’ through group efforts (i.e., an instance that sparked design ideas and guided design action and direction), it appeared to create a stronger team dynamic. Team dynamics were also evident when students’ strengths, talents, and energy were recognized by peers and instructors (Jarl 2016). For example, the linear and inversion models, where students exercised their own skills for use of the entire class as a class-wide decision, had salutary team dynamic effects. When students’ strengths, expertise, and skillsets were identified by group members and the instructor, it seemed to promote team dynamics. Team dynamics also improved interpersonal cohesion and rapport among team members and helped them establish and achieve team goals. It also brought an increased sense of confidence and responsibility and held students accountable for the collaborative process. This type of accountability is also a necessary quality in professional workplaces (Koch 2002; Cho and Cho 2014). The experiential team dynamics appeared to have a positive impact even after the collaboration phase as in the example of the second studio with the inversion model. Students continued to collaborate during the individual project process that followed their earlier immersion in the collaborative phase. They also seemed to understand the benefits of flows of information across different design stages. Thus, formulating effective strategies for team dynamics is important to maintain fluid collaborative behaviours especially in projects where group outcomes are assimilated into coherent, unified final plans.

However, positive team dynamics were not achieved in certain circumstances. One example was in the permutation model studio where a team failed to collaborate due, in part, to conflicting interests and understanding of the professional design standards, different design vocabulary, and cultural and professional differences that reflected individual training. This group had undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students with very diverse cultural and educational backgrounds. However, interestingly, this group outperformed all other groups, but it was at the expense of concerted efforts. Apparently, cognitive diversity and interdisciplinarity were the attributes to catalyse quality design development but escalated interpersonal conflict, which obstructed subsequent collaborative learning. In this case, the formal collaborative setting was not as effective as in their peers’ groups. Although the permutation model combined the advantages from the other three collaboration models, the path towards positive team dynamics led to team conflict when they faced challenges. In this situation, the instructor’s role required rather direct intervention to reconcile and arbitrate the group’s disputes. At times, instructors should intervene and/or decide to reorganize or break up the group. To avoid potential drawbacks from the permutation model, course strategies and techniques should be employed to help improve collaboration. For example, on the first day of the class, instructors can survey students on how they learn, their academic and cultural backgrounds, and whether they have prior knowledge and professional involvement related to the content of the studio course. The aggregated results of individual responses can then be shared with the entire class, so they understand the personal and social identities of the other studio participants as well as social institutions surrounding them. Lectures preceding studio work could include multicultural course content to increase students’ global and cultural awareness and promote intercultural communication. An intimate understanding of their peers’ backgrounds and strengths will likely help prevent conflicts and friction.

Intercultural communication challenges are reported in other research as well (Aritz and Walker 2010). Since the findings of this study are from an isolated case, further research will shed light on the direct implications of multicultural and interdisciplinary team composition and the complexity of collaboration in diverse groups. One lesson from the observation is that a more flexible learning approach that allows for a fail-to-design option needs to be granted and understood by design participants. Given the fact that studios are becoming increasingly more diverse (Guest 2017), it is essential to build an inclusive studio culture where the shared values of mutual respect and diversity are appreciated and promoted.

Formative vs. summative evaluations

Using formative evaluations including student course evaluations (N = 78) and interviews (N = 10), students identified what motivated them to collaborate with others. They reported that a flexible environment and an efficient work culture were conducive to collaboration. When asked ‘What was the best part in studio learning from the course?’ most students responded that the charrettes were their favourite experience in studio learning. The small planning and design charrettes were also perceived as a feature that promoted peer collaboration, regardless of the design theme or problem statement. Through this process, students were given opportunities for rapid integration and in-depth synthesis of individuals’ ideas in the group’s design. Representative comments from the course evaluation of the 2017 Regional Planning hybrid studio with the third – and fourth-year students include the following:

I really enjoyed the charrettes that we did, especially the last one. I had never worked or done one myself, so it was nice working as a group to get the deliverables on time.

I really enjoyed the design charrette since we never used that before. I liked the quick presentations from each group. I thought we went into much greater detail about site inventory and analysis, which was helpful.

The planning and design charrettes were tough, but effective in learning experiences. I thought it was a great approach to see each group think fast and effectively.

The 3-hour design charrette we had really interested me on learning to come up with a quick easy to read site layout and design for that site.

I liked that we got to have several short design charrettes. It kept the class interesting and helped me better understand regional planning.

Another component that influenced their perceived collaborative outcomes from summative evaluations was opportunities for peer-teaching/learning, peer-critiques, and feedback from the project jury. The opportunity for peer-critiques was highlighted across the experimental studio settings. Students noted that they maximized the time they could review and respond to the work of other students during the mid and final project reviews. Having students perceive this form of constructivist learning as acceptable and desirable in the design studio not only increased studio engagement but also prevented an overemphasis on final design outputs. As Pak and Verbeke (2013) cautioned, an emphasis on final outputs represents a potential threat to positive learning in that collective critiques motivate students to work long hours on a presentation in front of a jury of experts. However, some students were concerned about one-off occasions that gave limited time for project review, thus diverting the focus towards the final product instead of the overall learning process (Koch 2002). When students had little time to comment on and criticize the work of peers, they were not motivated to actively participate in the discussion (Webster 2007). The juxtaposition model was especially useful for students in commenting on the work of peers, due largely to their prior collaboration experience working on a short and manageable project. Of the 33 students in this studio, 18 students indicated that peer-teaching and learning and opportunities for critique were supportive learning components as shown in the following example comments.

I do enjoy the [collaborative] projects within this course. I do appreciate the peer critique sessions because it allows room for improvement. – A student from 2016 Urban Design Studio.

I liked peer-teaching and required participation in collaboration. It helped me focus on lecture more. – A student from 2016 Urban Design Studio.

The post-project peer evaluations had a tangible impact on student behaviours in the subsequent collaborative projects but students perceived them more as a reactive and adaptive tool rather than a means to exercise proactive collaboration. For example, in the permutation model of the collaboration studio, the overall average points of the peer evaluations increased from the first peer evaluation to the third peer evaluation. In the third evaluation, the groups including members with strong leadership skills obtained the full accumulative collaboration point average (30 pts), indicating that all participants in the group received the full collaboration points from their group members.

Collaborative learning outcomes

Increased collaboration skills resulted in the creation of quality work. Although it is not a causal relationship, iterative collaborative processes were associated with creative outcomes in the final products. Active collaboration particularly helped students do a thorough analysis, which was not true of the pre-experimental studios. The collaborative inventory work motivated students to do more research as they explored their evidence-based designs. Some of the work was further strengthened by the increased rigour. The project success was also evident by the award-winning projects at various design competitions. In this respect, both inversion and permutation models showed a marked difference in the desired collaborative learning outcomes. Students’ success in the collaborative process allowed them to experience both rewards and recognition (Figures 9 and 10). The common features of these models included the presence of a primary project concentrated on a collaborative design, contrary to the juxtaposition and linear models where the primary project focused more on individual design learning. In all four courses, however, stakeholders were part of the collaboration, which is similar to real-world practice.

Figure 9. An example of an award-winning collaborative project.

Figure 10. An example of an award-winning project developed through collaboration from individual work.

The vigorous and dynamic collaborative environments in this study also had the potential for unplanned learning outcomes including students’ communication literacy, soft leadership, and stewardship of resources that gradually developed. These properties were adapted to build integrative collaboration and responsiveness to peer group needs. It is noteworthy that evaluations from different stakeholders (classmates, design experts, course instructors) and at different work stages allowed students to receive different types of feedback on their designs and class behaviours. This gave students opportunities to self-examine not only their design performance but also their collaborative attitudes, work ethics, and professionalism, all of which are important learning outcomes. More importantly, these processes expanded individual creative capability as co-creators for their future, next-level projects.

Instructor’s role in peer learning

A cautious approach was taken in defining the roles of instructors to avoid potential hindrance and underestimation of peer learning experiences (See Pak and Verbeke 2013). From the beginning, students were told that they were the primary agents driving collaborative productivity. However, initial guidance and direction from the instructors was essential to initiate students’ peer collaboration. The instructors’ role as a catalyst for changing students’ attitudes towards collaboration was important throughout the design process. In this sense, the instructor attempted to minimize micromanagement and direct instructions, while still providing regular feedback and critiques as equitably as possible to student groups. In addition to helping students reflect on the process, instructors’ priority was to help students engage with the concept of creativity (Tucker et al. 2014), and apply a holistic approach to creativity and innovation in a flexible studio culture. The stated expectations were that students would interact in constructive peer-critiques, share data and information, use technologies, and engage in anecdotal conversations. In the permutation model, the roles of the instructor were more sensible than other collaboration models to help change the collaborative expectations and groups across the three different collaboration projects (Figures 6d and 11) and to facilitate student peer learning. During the last experimental studio in the permutation model, students reused, reprocessed, and revalued what their peers produced earlier through impromptu but persistent discussions.

Figure 11. Diagram of team organization from sectoral planning to final design.

Application challenges for collaborative studios

The way in which studio objectives are presented showed that design education needs a broader viewpoint and cooperative, mutually supportive training. The complex relationships among different agents and mechanisms in design studios require more than pure team building of formal collaboration methods. Rather, carefully planned setups with the applications of multi-layered, diversified teaching strategies provide ample opportunities for exemplar collaboration experiences and creativity. However, the application of the tactical approach requires considerable preparation time, balanced coordination between individual and group performance, and a good understanding of student demographics, characteristics, and strengths. It also requires faculty collaboration to identify appropriate inputs from previous instructors in the course sequence. Other challenges that need to be addressed in transitioning from one collaborative setup to the next include resistance to change, frequency of change, ownership of intermediate products, seamless data, and information transfer. One instructor commented:

It took a tremendous amount of time and effort to guide the students in the right direction and make sure that they are doing well and learn something from the collaborative process. – A co-instructor of 2017 Regional Planning and Design studio.

Conclusions

Incremental collaboration

This paper examined experimental settings for selected studios with the addition of incremental collaboration manoeuvres, complexity, and structured conditions to better understand the opportunities and limitations of peer‐to‐peer learning and examine the viability of different frameworks to boost proactive student collaboration. The collaborative learning environments were intentionally designed to enhance social reflection and representation within collaborative structures and interpretation processes. It was evident that a sophisticatedly designed studio combined with plural, diversified collaboration strategies are essential to provide students with successful learning experiences in both explicit and tacit forms. The results disclosed that collaboration can lead to progression or regression in learning processes depending on the pedagogical approaches, group composition, and group decision-making process. Progressive collective learning was found in groups with a mix of cultures, personalities, and defined roles. Groups with homogeneous personalities and over-dominant leadership styles struggled in the process, which subsequently thwarted active learning. In this case, formal collaborative settings were not as effective. Personality did not affect student learning outcomes much although there was an implicit pattern that embodied collaboration tendencies and attitudes. In this study, culture and interdisciplinarity were factors that catalysed quality design development but demographic team diversity showed negative effects, which confirms the findings of other studies (Kress and Schar 2011).

Collaboration typology: linear progression, inversion, juxtaposition, and permutation models

This study emphasizes that collaboration is an important aspect in urban design as the profession increasingly calls for diverse knowledge and approaches – both culturally and professionally. Urban design education needs to prepare future designers not only to be a place-maker but to be collaborators in practical settings. The typology with different collaboration mechanisms presented in this study (i.e., linear progression, inversion, juxtaposition, and permutation) serves as a framework to design collaborative studio courses based on the extent that desired collaboration skills and activities are expected. Essentially, the linear model scaled up individual work to a larger collaboration project by first giving students an opportunity to collaborate in small-scale designs for a non-design type of creativity. The inversion model scaled down class-level collaboration into individual work by team members collecting a large pool of ideas and co-generating data, and then making the information useable and manageable at the individual level. The juxtaposition model was especially useful in a sequenced process. It allowed students to follow a clear design path in the collaborative project with a familiar site first and then conduct a larger-scale individual project. The permutation model was effective for the application of different project types. It allowed students to tie projects together to create integrative final products. The collaboration framework can be tailored in various ways to meet the course mission by modifying the collaboration ratios, type, and intensity of the projects. Furthermore, establishing a link between the collaborative typology and the different teaching formats (e.g., lectures, discussions, and seminars to support and foster collaboration) could provide a useful framework for other studios.

Multi-layered collaborative approach

The purview of the urban design profession is becoming increasingly wider, making it a multidisciplinary balancing act to shape the future of our cities. Therefore, academic training for collaboration is important to professional landscape architects as urbanists. As students move towards the professional realm, they need to learn the necessary skills to collaborate with multiple disciplines and stakeholders. The multi-layered collaborative approach presented in this study can be an effective studio teaching strategy that goes beyond a linear and stereotyped approach to teach stronger collaboration skills. Integrative collaboration as part of student learning outcomes can result in quality designs, project value, stewardship, positive attitudes, high productivity, vision, and advocacy. A confluence of these parameters will help prepare future landscape architects who are socially responsive and responsible in cooperative professional environments. The lessons gained will help educators develop an effective studio teaching model that can facilitate authentic collaboration training and reflection-in-action for a holistic design process and to achieve an important student learning outcome that our profession needs and values.

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Dr. Richard McAvoy and retired professor Kristin Schwab for proofreading the manuscript and providing invaluable feedback. The author sincerely thanks all the students and faculty members involved in this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.