The art of
landscape is one of taking the natural elements of the Earth and merging
them with the modern creations of man to form a picturesque scene that?ll glow
beneath the illuminating rays of the sun, and to make this happen we need more
than just a piece of land and a tree. It requires a top quality group of
educated landscapers that understand the theories and connect emotionally to
the art. Unfortunately, Architecture and Urban Design students in Egypt
are used to being educated inside lecture rooms for theory and Landscape
application followed by studios for drawing skills and project generation. This
traditional learning scheme tends to be boring and slightly unsuccessful for
these new generations due to their rapid technological era which causes them to
forget the original essence of the art itself. A few years ago, I experimented
with teaching methods on my disinclined students and came up with the
accidental conclusion of Interactive Lectures.This research project had a testing approachfor
testing the reliability and validity of my conclusion by teaching Landscape to
undergraduate students in a mixture with previous trials. The paper is an
applied research on a sample of sixty students in the third grade of the Urban
Design department. The test duration was three months long and was repeated for
three consecutive years till 2012. During the first year of trying the
interaction, it was applied for two sessions only, and in the years following
the trial was generalised for all sessions.The research looked over theories,
histories and projects but in an interactive point of view. It stimulates the
students to share, interfere, innovate and invent in an educational field
depending on their own skills not the tutor?s. The interactive study included
lectures, visiting landscaping sites, open air classes, multimedia
applications, applying their ideas in studios and self evaluation. By the end
of the test, final grades showed impressive improvement in students for both
theoretical and practical skills, and proved that Interactive lectures are
efficient in other more serious subjects in our Egyptian Universities as well.
[1]Testing
approach: Is the staring of
the conceptual-abstract level and deductive reasoning in research.
[Merriam,
S, (1998) Qualitative Research and Case Study Application in Education (2nd
edition),San Francisco]
- Website : http://
- Project start : 2012
- Project end : 2012
- Contact Person : Dr Germin Farouk El Gohary
- Funding Agency : Ain Shams University
- Project structure : According to Burns[1],
research is an investigation to answer a question. (Burns, R., 1990) From the
view point of application this project depends on Pure Research. Taking the
previous teaching techniques made by others and the author to assess the
validity of creative methods in landscape courses in order to add new
installation to the methods. (Kumar, R., 1999: 8-9) This outcome came from
regular questionnaire for students (See Annex I) after each assignment to
collect qualitative data and final grading for quantitative data by
manipulating active data collected.
Dale?s Cone of
experience was theoretical foundation for the research, as different audio and
visual learning materials were applied to sessions such as drama, music, a
technological devices and outdoor activities.
As a college teacher I tried to experience a
deep engagement with students by intersection of active learning with
motivation (Barkley, E., F., p.8, 2010) by mixing previous tested methods with
some proposed creative techniques.
[1] Burns:Robert Bruce Burnsa teacher in the Faculty of Education at the University of Brunei.
http://books.google.com.eg/books/abou /Introduction_to_research_methods.html?id=aP3tAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y - Location : Egypt, , lat : 30.119798600000000000 - lng : 31.537000300000045000 address : Cairo Governorate, Egypt
