'Peer Critique' in Debate: A Pedagogical Tool for Teaching Architectural Design Studio

What I read

The authors of this paper describe several approaches of critique that were used during a semester-long architecture project. They conclude that "peer critique in the form of debate can be an effective pedagogical tool for educators to provide quality feedback to the presentation group."

The authors describe the design studio, focusing on the types of things that students learn during their studio experience. They note that various forms of critique are used, and that "feedback from instructors, peers, and external judges forms the foundation for students to reflect on and revise their digital work. This type of critique offers a positive and constructive experience sharing and externalizing design thinking and judgment."

In this case study, after the course was over, the authors interviewed five students about their experiences using group critique. During the course, students worked in groups. They were given feedback in three phases. It is difficult to understand the differences between these groups.

The first group of findings is called "learning by active exploration," but does not mention critique at all. The second group, "learning from peer debate," discusses how a SWOT analysis was used during debate-style discussion. In this approach, students first presented their work. This was followed by debate between the presenting team and their peers. Half of the debate team focused on strengths and opportunities, and the other half focused on weaknesses and threats. The format was "structured in the form of open discussion. This meant to serve to minimize the induced anxiety of the presenting team." They note that, during the debate, "tension towards the presenters was offset without any feelings of embarrassment or the need to respond defensively to negative comments."

Students also received feedback through a more traditional panel-style judging session, and one student felt that the panel judgement "undermined the continuous learning efforts made by students in assessment" because it focused on the end product instead of the learning process. The fourth group of findings shows the opposite—that students learned from the teacher throughout the process, rather than in aggregate at the end.

The authors indicate that Chinese students may be reluctant to providing negative comments to one another, and speculate that "a debate format may be more accepted by students when comments are made on the balance of potential and limitations of a project rather than receiving a quantitative score without knowing the strengths and weaknesses." Citing Seymour, the authors note that "critique requires practice," and a SWOT-style analysis may offer that practice.

What I learned and what I think

The use of the SWOT analysis is interesting, because it provides a framework for analysis that isn't based on more traditional learning outcomes. I struggle with this paper, because it doesn't describe this intervention in any substantial detail, and it raises a lot of questions that I think are actually valuable ways to reform critique.

The framework is commonly used in industry in a number of ways, and the use of that specific framework is to encourage a more objective, thoughtful review of a business model or product decision. Strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities makes sense in transferring from a business context to a creative one. Threats does not, at least in the formative and generative parts of envisioning a building, because students weren't focused on externalities (at least as far as I can tell in the paper.) That doesn't mean the framework approach doesn't make sense, it just indicates that this particular framework may not fit perfectly.

SWOT also is used to evaluate an end-artifact, not a process on the way to an end-artifact (the end-artifact may be a process, but that's different.) This debate used it to evaluate moment-in-time artifacts, which I think was not the authors' goal.

It's also not clear to me why the designers argued for the benefits of their work, but the rest of the group argued for the presence of the negatives. This seems to fly in the face of the need for a stress-free, positive experience for students.

All of that aside, the concept of using a non-grade-based framework itself, and presenting it as a form of argument, is interesting. For this to avoid becoming a defensive experience, the discussion probably shouldn't be about what is "good or bad." It might focus on the way in which the designer integrated stated constraints, or how they established their own constraints and then met or didn't meet them. This isn't much of a critique, but would be a useful conversation if it ended in a synthesized critique from the professor. It might also work if the team that designed the work actually played the role of critique of their own work, while the other debate team argued the positive aspects.

I'm pondering a few things. First, the throw-away comment about how students need to learn and practice critique is right on. Someone needs to model the behavior they want to see and hear, and that has to come across early in the curriculum. Next, there's still an assumption that students have learned enough to provide meaningful comments. There is value in a designer hearing meaningless comments, or ungrounded and incomplete feedback, as they'll hear that consistently through their career. But it seems like a pretty large waste of time, in such a resource-constrained educational experience, to give such an expansive stage to what is probably not useful.

There's also a consistent element to all of these papers around the need for students to feel supported and safe, and I don't question that at all, but there's always an undercurrent of "they need to hear positive feedback," and little discussion of how hearing negative, direct discussion has a huge amount of value. If they aren't showing capability in a certain skill, they need to hear it, and at a very detailed level. That is by nature negative; it is criticism in the defining sense of the work. The same is true in output, even though I think that's much less value. There is a ton of value in hearing or seeing someone who knows what they are talking about describe, in detail, what is not good about what a student made. Where is the discourse of that? Design school isn't about learning a process that you can follow; it's (at least mostly?) about learning how to be a good designer.