Learning as an interactive process is an important issue in architectural design education. This study aims to focus on architectural design process through learning styles that are 'accommodating', 'diverging', 'assimilating' and 'converging' as stated in the Experiential Learning Theory of Kolb. A research was conducted to evaluate the effects of learning style preferences on the performance of design students in a design process. It was found that there were statistically significant differences between the performance scores of students having diverse learning styles at various stages of design process. Also, it was found that performance scores of all students having different learning styles had increased at the end of the design process where the progress of assimilating learners were the highest and accommodating learners the lowest. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

The study focuses on design education using Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) and explores the effects of learning styles and gender on the performance scores of freshman design students in three successive academic years. Findings indicate that the distribution of design students through learning style type preference was more concentrated in assimilating and converging groups. Further study indicates that the first and third groups were found to be more balancing while the second group being mostly a southerner. The learning style preferences did not significantly differ by gender in all three groups. Although there is no consistency in all three groups, results indicate that the performance scores of males were higher in technology-based courses, whereas scores of females were higher in artistic and fundamental courses and in the semester academic performance scores (GPA). Also, it was found that the performance scores of converging and diverging students differed significantly in favor of converging students only in design courses. In design education, instructors should provide a strategy that is relevant to the style of each learner in design studio process.

Using Kolb's Experiential Learning Model, this study explores learning styles of freshman design students in three consecutive academic years. Principal Component Analysis method is used to reduce the number of variables and classify them according to the priorities assigned to learning process by the design students. Findings showed that the distribution of design students through learning style preference was concentrated in assimilating group with coordinates close to the intersection of the axes of the Learning Style Type Grid. The bipolar perceive dimension indicated that the freshman design students are more related to the analytical skills of theory building, quantitative analysis and technology. Also, the bipolar process dimension showed that they have better behavioural skills compared to perceptual learning skills.

The most commonly used space in architectural education is the studio, which functions both as a learning centre and as a complex social organization. The behavioural elements in the design studio are analysed with respect to the social processes of environmental psychology; namely privacy, personal space, territoriality and crowding. A case study was conducted to evaluate the di¡erences between the desired and actual conditions of a design studio in the Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design at Bilkent University. The expectations and preferences of the interior architecture students pertaining to the design studio were analysed by considering the sex di¡erences in patterns of privacy preferences and the results of this study are expected to be used as input for a new design studio. Results showed that there was no di¡er-ence between preferences of solitude, reserve, anonymity, and isolation among sexes. Although there was a signi¢cant di¡erence among sexes where females preferred intimacy with family and males preferred intimacy with friends.

The study focuses on design education using 'Index of Learning Style' (ILS) and explores the effects of learning styles and gender on the performance scores of design students. The ILS is designed to assess preferences on four scales of a learning style model formulated by Felder and Silverman (1988). The findings indicated that the usual methods of interior architecture education address a well-balanced class position in active/reflective and sensing/intuitive scales, a moderate to strong preference in visual scale and a weak preference in global scale. Furthermore, in the two-way analysis significant effects were obtained between the individual interactions of active/reflective scale with the other three scales when the academic performance score was the dependent variable. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved