Thought explorer or memory champion?
Everyone has a level of intellect that allows them to perceive the world and capture knowledge through uniquely tailored glasses. Diverse perspectives on a single topic, rather than relying solely on one or a few significant points of view, can help to create a more comprehensive picture of it. The agency of each mind is…
Who can assess?
Grades have always been my metric to evaluate my progress during the years of education, and I think how to take an exam is a skill to acquire: managing time, strategies to answer questions based on the question type, handling stress, etc. Especially that as a personal experience, we had to plan at least a…
Case-Based Pedagogy
A major part of architectural design exploration is physical prototyping. It is when you can get much clear insight of the abstract thought and inspect the idea through different lenses, most often the three fundamentals of building outlined by Vitruvius: Firmatis or robustness and durability, Utilitas or the functionality and Venustas, aesthetical aspects: how building…
Inclusive Pedagogy, Celebrating Uniqueness
Pedagogy in its nature should be inclusive. It entails being fair as an ethical virtue and being considerate and mindful in a way that everyone feels welcome. One step toward inclusiveness might be practicing tolerating and learning from diverse views and thoughts. I think one challenge is that we want to treat the students impartially,…
Discovering Your Authentic Teaching Self
My first attempt to teach dates to my first grade when the teacher asked me to help a student -who had been retained- with an assignment. While trying to share what I knew and focusing on conveying it, I thought that I was also learning better with that review, and we did our assignments together.…
Dimensions of Teamwork
Knowledge progress today needs extensive collaboration of different specialties. From one side, we are moving towards “narrowing down” research and specializing. From the other side, due to the nature of our problems and questions today, terms like multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, intra-professional, and similar ones have arisen. They stem from the idea of a “teamwork.” Bridging…
Education as a Critical Think Tank
During my years of higher education, I have always wondered what the main difference is between me as someone who has who has been privileged to experience higher education and someone who has not such access. What major thing changes or should change after such exposure? Especially in our time, when the current technology to…
Opening the “Black-Box” of Distant Design Studio
“In our studio culture, we experiment playfully, analyze thoughtfully, apply rigorously, and reflect critically… Studio culture provides the safe, inclusive environment in which students can take risks and increase in confidence.” [1] Teaching conventional architecture is an interactive process that entails collaborative learning and teaching, teamwork, making physical and virtual models, visiting and analyzing architectural…
Open Access Journal
I first searched to see what an open-access journal means. According to Suber Peter’s book “Open Access Overview”, it is defined as a scholarly journal available online and free of charge and other access barriers. They remove price barriers such as subscription, licensing fees, pay-per-view fees, and most permission barriers (e.g., copyright and licensing restrictions).…
An ORI Case Summary, Research Ethics or Morals?
The case summary section of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) website publishes descriptive summaries of research misconducts addressed by this office. Research misconducts include unethical practices such as plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification. The case that I reviewed was regarding a former researcher from the University of Alabama at Birmingham listed in the 2018 section.…
Sara Saghafi 