Using service-learning to develop collaboration skills.

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of a 38-student cohort in the fourth year of a five-year Bachelor of Architecture program at Louisiana State University. It focuses on how four service--learning projects were used to develop students' collaboration skills.

Background

Architecture students are notorious for their independence, and subscribe to an earlier, but albeit suspect, vision of the architect as the Renaissance person, working alone exercising his or her creative skills to make places. Unfortunately this stereotype could not be farther from the truth. Contemporary architectural practice is highly complex, and with the exception of very small projects, always involves collaboration and frequently employs collaboration software. As Dana Cuff pointed out, "It is perhaps the digital restructuring of time and space that have most fundamentally transformed architecture and planning." (1) Architects work in teams in their offices, partner with consultants, and finally rely on contractors to execute their designs. Collaboration skills are increasing in importance as technology makes geographical separation insignificant and increases the options for specialization. Nonetheless, collaboration is often considered a secondary issue in architecture programs even though it is a required component of the professional degree program accrediting requirements. Unfortunately teaching methodologies at most schools reinforce the idea of the architect as independent thinker. (2) The studio approach to teaching, which is embraced at all programs, involves considerable one on one instructor-student contact which reinforces the students' tendency to work in isolation. The precedent for this emerges from an apprenticeship tradition, and the influence of the Ecole de Beaux Arts. Criticism of this approach began over seventy years ago when it was strongly rebuked in the Bosworth and Jones study on architecture schools in 1932. (3) More recently in Dana Cuff's 1989 Journal of Architectural and Planning Research article, she presents a compelling argument that the isolation of the design studio results in practitioners who are unable to work effectively with others. (4) In 1996 Boyer and Mitgang, in their expansive study of architectural education and practice, conclude that collaboration is necessary to enrich the profession, understand and promote diversity and "foster a climate of caring for human needs." (5)

Until recently, the curriculum at LSU was not an exception. The first three years of the professional undergraduate program are devoted to developing basic design skills and technical knowledge. A majority of non-studio work is taught in a traditional classroom setting, completed individually, and evaluated using papers, projects and traditional testing methods. Studio work is normally undertaken individually, but is occasionally augmented with team efforts to gather information or complete other tasks that may be used collectively. However, this collaborative work often has little impact on an individual student's performance. Studio teaching pedagogy further encourages individual work. Studio classes are typically small, fifteen students in the upper years, to enable the studio instructor to meet with each student individually for critiques at their desk during the four-hour class period held three days per week. Consequently, when students reach their fourth year of study they have developed an approach that minimizes collaboration in favor of individual effort. This is reinforced by the attitude many students subscribe to, that the realization of their creative ideas will be compromised if developed collaboratively. However as Nesbitt wrote in Twilight of Authority, "Despite the American creed of individualism, which locates motivation and achievement in the recesses of the individual mind and character, human accomplishment in almost any form is the product of association...." (6)

Curricular Structure of the Fourth Year

In response to the need for greater collaboration, the fourth year was restructured to promote teamwork, and collaboration with a service-learning partner. The first semester of fourth year is devoted to an introduction to community planning, and the second semester to enhancing their previously developed skills and abilities through application to a complex design project. This paper discusses the approach to facilitating collaborative activities during the fall 2001 semester studio class of 38 students.

Students were assigned four service-learning design projects during the semester. Three projects presented community-planning challenges, and the fourth involved working with residents of a congregate care facility. During each project, the students were required to work with each other and community members responding to their needs in the project solutions. At the conclusion of each project, students presented their work to the community and provided them with documentation for further development. In one case they developed a website for the community partner. The cohort was divided into two studios of nineteen students, each with one instructor, and shared a common syllabus.

The strategy for developing the students' collaboration skills was in two parts: first, students were required to work with community members and second, students were required to work together in groups of varying size. Students confronted a variety of issues related to collaboration, and discussed them among themselves, in class settings, and finally in reflective journal assignments responding to prompts developed by the instructors. At the end of the semester, students were able to draw parallels among the issues confronted in the community and those that arose among the cohort's teams.

Approach

The strategy for developing students' ability to collaborate was straightforward.

1. Learning outcomes and assessment rubrics related to collaboration were developed, and added to other course learning outcomes.

2. The service-learning component of the course was fully integrated into the structure of the course.

3. The service-learning projects were the vehicle for delivering the curricular requirements of the course.

4. The projects were selected based on their fit with the course structure, and were organized to begin with the least complex project with subsequent projects increasing in complexity.

5. The structure and size of student teams paralleled the projects beginning by working in pairs and increasing group size as the projects became more complex, culminating with a component of the final project requiring the entire cohort to work together.

6. Project grades were dependent on group work. This meant that for group projects, grades were based on the group's effort with each team member receiving the same grade. Projects involving group work as a component of a project, but completed individually were structured so that the group work impacted the outcome of the individual's project.

7. Group compositions were created by instructor assignment of team members and student self-selection.

8. Disputes and other issues were handled within the group unless they involved nonparticipation or absence.

9. Instructors monitored the student response to group activities through large group discussions, peer discussions, and weekly journal submissions.

10. Every student had meaningful contact with community partners.

11. All available information was posted in digital format on the class Blackboard (web) (7) site.

Group Structure

During the course of the semester students worked in pairs, groups of three, groups of four and five, groups of nine, and as a cohort. Group composition was structured in different ways. Groups were composed of students only from their class section, intersection, and one project was completed with an interdisciplinary group. Both sections met together regularly to insure that all groups received the same information from the instructors, and had the ability to share information. The instructors controlled the composition of community groups that were engaged with the students.

First Project

Students began the semester working in pairs in a small rural community forty miles north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The assignment was to prepare a plan for revitalizing the one-mile long Main Street commercial district. Students visited the site and met with community leaders who provided them with current and historical information about the Town. In addition, student teams had the opportunity to meet with business owners and gather other information to assist them with the development of the project. Basic information gathering was undertaken by the entire cohort and distributed by posting it in digital format on the class Blackboard site. The students learned a great deal about the Town, and discovered that they had only heard one of the many community voices. In addition, they learned that a single person owned the majority of the properties in the Town and sat on the local bank Board of Directors. As the students struggled to develop common ideas to create a project solution, they discovered that the community had not gone through the same process. Although the students had minimal previous exposure to planning concepts, they quickly understood that unless there was consensus among all community voices any proposal was likely to fail to meet its potential. The instructors asked the students to respond to this situation in a journal prompt entitled, "Who Gets to Decide." Within the cohort, students faced similar issues as they were forced to compromise and achieve consensus on the direction of their projects in order to meet the project deadlines.

Second Project

The second project was in a small city in northern Louisiana, which required the cohort to make an overnight field trip to gather information. The overnight lodging was in a group camp at a nearby state park essentially requiring the students to be together as a cohort for 24 hours. The project involved documenting the buildings in a nine-block area of the City designated as a historic district. At the time the project was started there were no drawings of the area that could be used for planning and development. The students were divided into seven teams of three, and two teams of four, Each team was responsible for documenting the existing conditions of one city block. During the site visit the students met with several members of the historic district, the Mayor, and business owners in the historic district. At the time of the visit, the Parish Courthouse (8), which is located on the center block of the district, was nearing the end of a substantial renovation and the remainder of the historic district was in the midst of a redevelopment effort funded jointly by the Louisiana Office of Historic Preservation, the overseer of U.S. Park Service Main Street Program, and the City. The project was structured so that each team completed a portion of the work. The combined work of all the groups formed the foundation for the project work to be completed individually. Using the work of their team and the cohort as a starting point, each student independently developed a response to the design problem. The student's final grade for the project was based on both the individual and team project work.

This project was considerably more complex than the first, and students were aware from the beginning that given the project requirements, it was not possible to complete the project individually. In this situation there was considerable peer pressure among the teams and cohort to complete the work quickly and accurately to ensure the best possible individual performances. Students learned quickly that working in larger groups was considerably more difficult than working in teams. During class meetings the role of leadership was discussed and students were asked to designate a team leader for each of the nine teams. The instructors met with the team leaders and relied on them to convey information to the other team members. In addition, team leaders coordinated the assemblage of common information. Like the first project, students gathered background information about the City. In this situation they discovered, like the previous project, that the group representing the historic district was not representative of the entire community. In a City that has a majority black population, only one black person served on the board of the historic district. The instructors developed several prompts for the weekly journal exercises exploring the ramifications of excluding a portion of the population from the decision making process. During class discussions, the instructors drew parallels to the class group activity, focusing on the difficulty of achieving consensus among large groups.

Third Project

The third project was undertaken in a congregate care facility located on the Mississippi coast, two hours from the University. In this project, students worked in four and five person teams and coordinated their work with Landscape Architecture and Interior Design students working on different aspects of the project. The students made two visits to the project site and conducted two formal presentations of their work. The project work resulted in a bound volume of all the projects completed by the students. At this juncture, students were accustomed to collaborative work and had developed strategies for distributing and completing work based on the strengths of the team members. Unlike the other projects, there was little disagreement among the community participants, and the project helped focus attention on more global issues involving the elderly. During this project, the instructors encouraged peer discussions about these issues.

Fourth Project

The final project of the semester involved working with a coalition of five cemeteries to assist them in developing planning strategies for marketing the cemeteries as a tourist destination. (9) In addition to planning studies, the students created web sites to be used by the coalition. The planning component was managed in the same manner as the second project, a combination of team and individual work. The web site was completed in teams of five. For most of the project-work, the students replicated collaboration methods they used in earlier projects. However, the cohort was responsible for planning and facilitating a community meeting. The students developed groups to fulfill this requirement and appointed a person as the overall coordinator. The instructors only assisted the students with developing the content of the meeting. The meeting was successful and ran without major problems.

Lessons

At the end of the semester, the students had developed the confidence to manage collaborative work with little or no assistance, but the impact of the experience was much greater. Collectively, the students ended the semester having learned important lessons. First, students at Louisiana State University often bring a limited world-view to their work, and this often leads students to make decisions based on opinion or anecdote. Working collaboratively forced students to understand the importance of accuracy as a result of challenges by members of their team. By the end of the semester, the instructors observed that students were able to articulate their positions and respond to the challenges that resulted from peer discussions. Students became accustomed to having their ideas challenged and came to realize that their individual decisions also impacted the group. Prior to this collaborative work, the students did not have an appreciation of each other's abilities even though they had been together for three years. The collaborations in the context of community work taught the students to value the opinions of their classmates, and provided an opportunity to test their own ideas. Working together began to eliminate the stereotypes that students had developed regarding peer strengths and weaknesses. Finally, collaboration helped students define themselves in the context of their professional work by helping them position themselves in teams based on their strengths. Some students unexpectedly emerged as leaders when presented with the opportunity. Others, who thought of themselves as leaders, discovered that they were not able to successfully manage their teams.

Conclusion

The instructors believe that the service-learning approach places problem solving and decision making in context. For many students it was the first time they had used the skills they acquired in architecture school to benefit others. The result was learning that had meaning to them both personally and professionally. The collaborations succeeded in meeting the objectives the instructors had established. At the end of the course, students had developed the ability to collaborate in a variety of settings and in groups of varying sizes. They learned that collaboration meant taking personal risks by exposing their ideas for their peers to scrutinize. They accepted that collaboration always required compromise, and learned that successful collaboration usually resulted in stronger project outcomes. Finally, the students were able to draw parallels between the issues that they confronted in their groups and the issues raised in the communities they worked with.

Citations and Endnotes

(1) Dana Cuff, "The Design Professions," Design Professionals and the Built Environment: An Introduction, eds. Paul Knox and Peter Ozolins (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2000) 36.

(2) See Kathryn H. Anthony, Design Juries on Trial: The Renaissance of the Design Studio (New York:VNR) 9.

(3) F. H. Bosworth Jr. and Roy Childs Jones, A Study of Architectural Schools (New York: Scribner, 1932).

(4) Dana Cuff, "The Social Art of Design at the Office and Academy," Journal of Architecture and Planning Research 6.3 (1989) 186-203.

(5) Ernest L. Boyer and Lee D. Mitgang, Building Community: A New Future for Architecture Education and Practice (Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation, 1996) 38.

(6) Robert Nisbet, Twilight of Authority (New York: Oxford) 269.

(7) Blackboard is a trade name for Blackboard, Inc., a web-based instruction tool.

(8) In Louisiana, political subdivisions of the state are referred to as parishes rather than counties.

(9) In New Orleans cemeteries are a major tourist attraction. This project was conceived to build on that tourist market.

Frank Maling Bosworth III, Louisiana State University Marsha Ruth Cuddeback, Louisiana State University

Dr. Bosworth is a Professor of Architecture and is a Director of the Office of Community Design and Development, the community outreach program in the College of Art and Design. Cuddeback is a Professional in Residence in the School of Architecture, Coordinator of the School's Intern Development program and a Director of the Office of Community Design and Development, the community outreach program in the College of Art and Design. She is a registered architect with substantial practice experience that she integrates into her teaching.