A Teaching Experiment in Architectural Design Focused on Efficiency: A Study on the Active and Passive Methods of Site Information Acquisition

An important goal in the reform of architectural design education is to instruct students in ways of acquiring relevant site information quickly and efficiently during a design project, and then integrating that information into their architectural designs. This study focuses on a teaching experiment conducted within the “Urban Village Renovation Design” course for third-year undergraduates at Zhejiang University. This study aims to improve teaching efficiency by combining active and passive information acquisition methods during the site information acquisition stage. A teaching experiment on “Urban Village Renovation Design” was conducted with third-year undergraduates at Zhejiang University, comparing two experimental groups based on whether the teacher provides site information reports (i.e., passive information acquisition). The study explores efficient methods for acquiring different types of site information in architectural design teaching and develops a matching framework. It evaluates the impact of active vs. passive methods on students’ cognitive levels, using Bloom’s taxonomy, and quantitatively tests cognitive efficiency differences through the ROI model. Results show that combining both methods yields the highest teaching efficiency, with specific types of information corresponding to effective active or passive acquisition methods. This study explores which research methods can yield beneficial site information more efficiently and clarifies the role of previously overlooked passive information acquisition methods in site cognition, providing theoretical support for the design of teaching plans during the research phase. From a practical standpoint, it is suggested that instructors provide certain site information directly rather than have students acquire it independently, to shorten the research phase of teaching and simultaneously enhance site cognition efficiency.

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