Erasmus Multilateral Projects 134516-LLP-1-2007-1-GR-ERASMUS-EVC Virtual Campus on post-master Studies in Architecture First Progress Evaluation Report 1. Introduction The following progress report on the e-archidoct project development provides a summary of the activity to date on the project and the remaining steps necessary for it to be implemented. This document focuses on the relationship between objectives and outputs and the actions undertaken during the project in order to reach its objectives. In the first phase of the implementation of the project (October 2007 October 2008) the following work packages were developed: WP1-Management of the e-archidoct Virtual Campus, WP2-Definition of the main competences for the Course offered by the e-campus and development of a qualification framework for postmaster studies, WP3- Mapping and evaluating the existing architectural education experiences developed in the domain of virtual mobility and ODL in the last 5 years. WP4 - Preparation of the modules of the e-campus WP5 - Construction of the site of the e-campus WP6 - Preparation of a series of LLL sessions WP7 - Evaluation process of the project 2. Background As it is explained in the application document the e-archidoct consortium is generated out of a long period collaboration with persons and institutions in the last ten years mainly through the activities of the Socrates Thematic Network. In this framework a series of consensuses have been achieved, which in the years took the form of agreed coherent positions regarding the higher architectural education in Europe. All of us felt that the doctorate studies have by any means to be enhanced, supported and promoted to the broader European social and cultural milieu. The consortium was generated by the will and the wish to make a contribution towards this direction based upon the respect of the conditions ruling the partners post master education practices, the mutual respects and the recognition of the multicultural dimension of architectural education in Europe. On the contrary, no common experience has been developed on the domain of distance learning and e- learning between the partners. As a consequence, all of them had to prepare together the common ground of their collaboration and to find together those paths, which could be the most appropriate for a respectful approach to the differences and the particularities of each partner and in the same time for a creative synthesis of their different research and teaching experiences. This objective is the most significant one for the adequate development of the e-archidoct project for the achievement of which the project spent a lot of time and energy. 3. Project Description The e-archidoct project is a Virtual University Campus resulting from the collaboration of 15 Schools of Architecture geographically spread throughout Europe, offering Post Master and Doctorate studies in
e-archidoct: Virtual Campus on post-master Studies in Architecture. Progress Evaluation Report 2 Architecture, and belonging to different architectural research cultures. What we want to achieve by this project is to educate competent researchers, ready to be successfully involved in the third cycle of studies offered by the partner institutions or any other institution. As we have already described in the application and the progress report, all schools of architecture worldwide offer education mainly oriented towards competences and skills related to the professional practice of the architect. The lack of specific research competences and skills is a crucial factor for the Post Master and Doctoral studies as it directly influences students performance, the speed of the development and completion of these studies, the value of the research questions they are able to raise and the quality of their research outcomes. E-Campus offers collaborative e-courses from which students can collect the necessary ECTS credits, which will assure all necessary research competences and skills. The respect of the academic identity of each partner institution was the fundamental principle on the basis of which the project develops. This approach generates the difficulty to find that common ground on which the course will find its form and content and will achieve the degree of coherence necessary for the evaluation of its quality. In the first year, all partners invested time and energy to achieve this expected degree of consensus and agreements regarding the way that the course will develop. The steering group of the project encountered an enormous number of practical, technical and academic issues, which not all the time were easily resolved. All partners consider as a great success and a promising perspective for its future of the course the fact that in less than a year e-archidoct is ready to be implemented. During the contractual period from October 2007 to October 2008 four meetings took place to coordinate the development of the project. The reports of these meetings are presented as an annex of this evaluation report. In these reports one can find the persons participating in each of the meeting, the items of their agendas, the main decisions taken and the distribution of tasks between the partners. All the meetings had as main objective to coordinate the team in order to be possible, going through the outcomes of the work packages, to have the e-archidoct course ready to start on the beginning of the academic year 2008-2009. 4. Scheduling Considerations During the implementation of the project some significant deviations happened. The main reason of these deviations was the fact that the decision about the educational and communication platforms appeared to be much more difficult and complicated than expected. The variety of the offered digital infrastructures had as a consequence the partners to have used and experienced different digital environments for e-learning and for this reason to render it difficult to agree which common platform will be used for the project. On the other hand many of them did not have serious experience on this domain and for this reason requested the selection of a simple and easy to be used e-learning environment. Due to the above conditions, the WP3 was the one that was modified content wise and time wise. Regarding the content, the Steering Committee decided to split the inquiry in two parts. The one concerns the investigation on the digital educational platform to be used by the project. The other concerned the teaching approaches implemented by other institutions practicing distant learning. All Partners considered that the first priority in the development of the project is to select and implement the most appropriate digital educational platform to the needs of the modules to be offered. This is the reason for the mapping of the existing educational experiences to be postponed to the end of the academic year in order to have the possibility to focus on the selection, implementation and familiarization of the digital educational platform to be used by the e-archidoct virtual campus. There were also some deviations of the schedule of the work packages WP4, WP6, WP7 which were less significant as they did not affect the main priorities of the project and were due mainly to technical reasons. More specifically, the WP4 could not be started before all the partners arrive at a conclusion
e-archidoct: Virtual Campus on post-master Studies in Architecture. Progress Evaluation Report 3 about the digital environment they will use to teach their modules. In parallel in most of the cases the e- modules that the partners will offer had to be agreed and approved by the internal coordination mechanisms which made the organization of the e-archidoct to be dependent from non controllable external factors. As in many cases the offer of courses was defined very late by their institutions, the team could not elaborate on a structure of the course nor to prepare the technical infrastructure for the implementation of the project. The development of the WP6 is primarily based on the work of the modules. The main idea was that the modules could offer a part of their teaching to a broader audience interested in the contents of the course. As the staff was working full time to prepare the lectures and the modules, it was not possible to take care of this aspect of the project. This is why the steering committee decided to prolong the duration of the work package. Finally for WP7, the first evaluation of the first eighth months of the project, it appeared more reasonable to have this report when the course will start and will give the first input to the team and not at a moment where all of the staff is working hard to implement the modules and to solve numerous technical and communicational issues. As a conclusion the team of the partners considers that the above mentioned deviations of the scheduled time for the implementation of the work packages do not at all affect the essential parts of the project which is the qualified education which will be offered to the students of the e-archidoct course. 5. Requirements Since the work packages are the structural units of the project we will present critically the work done and the work to be done for each one of them. WP1 Management Coordination of the team of teachers who will contribute to the course to prepare and to present in a homogeneous and comparable way the courses they will teach. Organization of the secretariat of the course, acting as the contact point for the students and the staff. Coordination of the collection of the students applications and their dissemination to the staff members who will make the selection. Contact with the students regarding the results of the selection process. Preparation of the evaluation work. Organization of the next meeting. Coordination of the development of the course and recording of the implementation problems appeared. Coordination of the self-evaluation of each one of the offered modules. Advertisement of the course in order to attract more students also from non-partner institutions. Further organization of the course secretariat. WP2 Competences of the graduates Preparation in collaboration with the partners and on the basis of the work done in the framework of the Tuning project of the list of competences that the e-archidoct course have to assure to its graduates. Presentation of dissemination of this list between the staff teaching in the course in order to define the competences for each one of the offered modules. Work pending Review of the proposed list after the experience of one semester teaching.
e-archidoct: Virtual Campus on post-master Studies in Architecture. Progress Evaluation Report 4 WP3 Mapping e-learning in architectural education Inquiry in a sample of 85 schools of architecture regarding the use they have of e-learning techniques in the educational programs of the school (master and/or post master). Investigation and comparative analysis of the digital and communicational platforms to be used in the development of the course. Selection a number of school cases to be investigated deeper and more systematically in order to sort conclusions of the qualitative and quantitative aspect of the use of e-learning techniques in architectural education in Europe. Run the final stage of the inquiry, data processing and publication of the results. WP4 Preparation of the modules Preparation of all the modules of the course, which will be taught this semester. Presentation of the modules on the e-archidoct web site in order to be selected by the students. Technical problems related to the usernames and passwords for the access to the digital platform have been solved. Opening of the course and closing the selection of the students. Run the semester and evaluate the quality and the whole development of the teaching. Selection of a number of lectures to be presented to the public as a LLL material. WP5 e-achidoct web site Development of the site and presentation of all the information about the content and the practicalities of the e-archidoct course Presentation of the modules on the e-archidoct web site in order to be selected by the students. Corrections on and amelioration of the readability, functionality and coherence of the site. Preparation of the web page of the e-archidoct digital magazine. WP6 LLP Lectures Agreement with the Grands Ateliers de l Isle d Abeau to use their data base with the lectures, images from all the experiments and investigation taken place in Grands Ateliers during the last years. Link of the e-archidoct with the Grands Ateliers database. Awaiting the final decision of the School of Architecture of Barcelona to open up its digital library to the e-archidoct students and staff and external architects. Selection of a number of recorded lectures to be part of the open platform of the e-archidoct. Create other links with similar databases of other partner institutions like the Bartlett and Oslo. WP7 Evaluation First evaluation report on the one-year activities of the e-archidoct course. Monitoring the development of the course and evaluating its performance. Organization of the evaluation meeting by the beginning of March. Coordination of the final evaluation report by external experts.
e-archidoct: Virtual Campus on post-master Studies in Architecture. Progress Evaluation Report 5 6. Overall Conclusions The aims and the objectives of the project are coming along well, despite the loss of several months of activity. The design is sound and there is a realistic timeline in place. There are no foreseeable major problems that will prevent timely implementation of this project. There are no other competing actions that might cause delay of this project. This project has the full support and commitment of the partners. The main problems that the team is actually dealing with are the following: The workload of the secretariat of the course to cope with the three alternative course selections. We have given to the students to propose alternative selections in case that a course would not accept them. This process prolongs significantly the selection process. Moreover this process does assure the selection process as the first option always covers the available positions of a course, leaving sometimes better students out because they proposed another (unsuccessful) option. The modules offered by the partners are based upon the availability of persons and resources and not on a strategic concept of the content of the course. Even if the objective of the course is to train researchers and someone could say that the specific subject areas are just the means or vehicle for this training, the dispersion of the themes of the modules does not permit to give to the overall course a specific content structure that could facilitate better the achievement of the objectives. The use of the e-archidoct course as an optional extension of the local post master taught courses gives a specific character of the course and the partners welcome it. It needs, nevertheless, some rules in order to avoid the unequal distribution of the origin of the students which risks to give the impression that the course is prepared to support the existing educational needs of some partner institutions. The steering committee will try to solve these problems during the next period and to discuss all of them in the next evaluation meeting, which is planned for the beginning of March 09. On behalf of the Steering Committee As. Prof. Dr. Constantin Spiridonidis e-archidoct coordinator November 2008