The design studio "crit": Teacher-student communication

The design studio has been, and will probably continue to be, the cornerstone of design education. Its major feature is the one-on-one desk critique (crit), in which student and teacher discuss the student's work in progress on a regular and frequent basis. The studio is a learning by doing environment, and the crit is the setting in which students acquire design skills and knowledge, under the guidance of the teacher. Design teachers are usually practitioners who receive no pedagogical training, and the effectiveness of their teaching depends on experience, awareness, and talent. Here we offer a detailed qualitative and quantitative representation of the crit through analyses of three case studies, which were collected in second-year architectural studios. We use two types of protocol analysis methods: coding of verbalizations and linkography, which looks at links among verbalizations. We show the diversity in teachers' performance and point to common trends. We propose that analyses of this kind may serve as a major feedback instrument in the framework of a badly needed pedagogical basis for design education.