CINIE 2019

For students participating in project design courses given at architecture schools like ETSAM, blended learning offers an opportunity to improve both their learning curve and their final results. The method consists in providing a digital platform for online tutoring to complement the current in-classroom course teaching structure. The investigation intends to: a) outline the benefits and disadvantages of the method, b) draw initial conclusions that may provide a basis for future fine tuning and c) offer some elements to measure the impact this addition may have on students’ performance during a trial course.

The study has been carried out within the standard design course given by the unit Lapuerta to final year undergraduate students at ETSAM. Approximately one third of the students in this course where given access to an online platform where they could upload their progress in a weekly basis and receive comments by a tutor in addition to the classroom course lectures and reviews all students received. At the end of the course, both the tutor and the students involved in the study evaluated their experience using a structured Q&A format. In addition to that, the grades each participating student received are compared to their previous performance in other courses and to the grades obtained by the rest of the students in the same course.