Below is the contact information to join the working groups and the scheduled conference calls:

Learning Environments
environments@acsa-arch.org March 14 12:30Ð1:30pm ET
April 4 12:30Ð1:30pm ET

Community Colleges / Preprofessional Education
cccap@acsa-arch.org
March 14 2:00Ð3:00pm ET
April 4 2:00Ð3:00pm ET

This week we invited members to join two new working groups: Learning Environments and Community Colleges, addressing two strategic directions for many architecture programs.

The Working Group on Digital and Physical Learning Environments in Architecture Education seeks to open a broad conversation about digitally mediated education. Online education, MOOCs, and new models of course delivery are already happening at a handful of architecture schools, and at many more universities, other disciplines have been engaged in distance education, hybrid learning, among others. Given the unique nature and tradition of architecture’s studio model, online or hybrid online/in-person education introduces questions about quality that have not yet been addressed in a systematic way. Other questions, such as teaching loads, faculty development needs, and research opportunities, also loom.

We believe that ACSA should be the venue for these discussions to happen. For the first time, NAAB’s proposed revisions to the “physical resources” Condition for Accreditation address the difference between online and on-campus learning environments. The Condition is still called Physical Resources, however, when one could argue that higher education in North America has left behind the traditional college campus as the datum for any conversation on what environment higher education should take place in.

We know of at least three NAAB-accredited degree programs that are primarily online (Boston Architectural College, Lawrence Tech, and Academy of Art University). But we do not yet know how many architecture programs are launching into hybrid learning or architecture MOOCs, much less how many more are being pressured by upper administration to do the same.

Before upper administrations or other external bodies dictate the rules and expectations for online learning, the ACSA membership needs to shape how we collectively understand levels of quality, outcomes assessments, and ways to enable faculty to capitalize on the digital world, rather than be run over by it.

The ACSA also created the Working Group on Community Colleges & Preprofessional Education in Architecture in response to multiple strategic interests of the membership. First is widespread concern about student enrollments, which have dropped between 3% and 8% (and could be more were it not for fewer decreases in international students). Second is the need to increase the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of the architecture student population. Third is the clear message from community colleges that they want to be at the table with accredited programs, as evidenced by the report for the NAAB Accreditation Review Conference from the Coalition of Community College Architecture Programs that cited nearly 200 programs in the United States.

The context for discussions in this group is the path through preprofessional education, into NAAB-accredited degree programs and on to careers in the profession. (For this reason, we also hope that representatives from four-year programs at institutions without a NAAB-accredited degree will join the group.)

We foresee conversations in this working group touching on beginning design education and other curriculum areas that community college and four-year programs cover. Also on the agenda will be formal and informal relationships between programs, including “articulation agreements” that streamline the transfer or placement of students into NAAB-accredited degree programs.

We expect both working groups to facilitate sharing syllabi, assessment instruments, policy documents, and more and our upcoming conferences will be byways for in-person conversations. In Miami at the 102nd ACSA Annual Meeting, we are planning an online education workshop for Thursday, April 10, from 9:00amÐ12:00pm, and on Saturday afternoon there will be a Special Focus Session on “Widening the Pipeline to the Profession.” (See the video from a November 2013 session here.

– Michael Monti, ACSA Executive Director