A World-wide Questionnaire Survey on the Use of Computers in Architectural Education

The paper reports on a study which examines the impact on architectural education needs arising from the changes brought about by the implications of CAD teaching/learning (CAI/CAL). The findings reflect the views of fifty-one (51) architecture schools through a world-wide questionnaire survey conducted in mid 1996. The survey was structured to cover four continents represented by seven countries, namely the USA, UK, Israel, Australia, Canada, Sweden and the Netherlands. Structurally the main findings of this study are summarised under five areas, namely: 1) General Information, 2) Program of Study (curriculum) and CAD course, 3) CAD Laboratories: Hardware, Software, 4) Departmental Current and Future Policies, 5) Multi-media and Virtual Reality. Principally, there were three main objectives for using the computers survey. Firstly, to accommodate a prevalent comprehension of CAD integration into the curriculum of architecture schools world wide. Secondly, to identify the main key factors that control the extent of association between CAD and architectural curriculum. Thirdly, to identify common trends of CAD teaching in Architecture schools world-wide and across the seven countries to establish whether there are any association between them. Several variables and factors that were found to have an impact on AE were examined, namely: the response rate, the conventional methods users and the CAD methods users amongst students, CAD course employment in the curriculum, age of CAD employment, the role of CAD in the curriculum, CAD training time in the Curriculum, CAD laboratories/Hardware & Software, computing staff and technicians, department policies, Multi-Media (MM) and Virtual-Reality (VR). The statistical analysis of the study revealed significant findings, one of which indicates that 35% of the total population of students at the surveyed architecture schools are reported as being CAD users. Out of the 51 architecture schools who participated in this survey, 47 have introduced CAD courses into the curriculum. The impact of CAD on the curriculum was noted to be significant in several areas, namely: architectural design, architectural presentation, structural engineering, facilities management, thesis project and urban design. The top five CAD packages found to be most highly used across universities were, namely, AutoCAD (46), 3DStudio (34), Microstation (23), Form Z (17), ArchiCAD (17). The findings of this study suggest some effective and efficient future directions in adopting some form of effective CAD strategies in the curriculum of architecture. The study also serves as an evaluation tool for computing teaching in the design studio and the curriculum.