How Do the Demographic Differences of Architectural Students Correlate to Their Performance in Multidisciplinary Fields?

Abstract

Architectural education needs creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. However, little research has looked into how demographic differences, especially gender and learning style, affect the performance of architecture students especially in multidisciplinary curricula. Therefore, the paper aims to investigate the relationship between learning styles and gender among architecture students and their academic performance in a biomimicry-based practice.  A practice one-week workshop was employed with a sample of architecture students to identify their idea-generation style and creativity, through novelty, resolution, and elaboration. The study found that Learning styles greatly influence idea generation style preferences and creativity performance in teamwork. Females tend to be more collaborative idea-generators during the initial stages than males. Also, Scores of novelty and elaboration were more closely tied to learning styles, while resolution scores were more associated with gender. Despite many limitations such as the focus on a specific multidisciplinary field (the architectural articulation of biomimicry), the results contribute to the development of architecture teaching strategies and the broader field of biomimicry by providing insights into how different students approach biomimicry-based design challenges.