Scholars have agreed that the way in which students perceive their learning environments influences their academic performance. Empirical studies that focus on architecture students, however, have been very scarce. This is the gap that an attempt is filled in this study. A questionnaire survey of 273 students in a school of architecture in Nigeria provided data for this pilot study. The perceptions of the students were best defined by the involvement of the students in their studies, the perceived support, and conduciveness of the learning environment. The students' perceptions of their learning environment varied with their years of study, age and gender. Their perceptions of inflexibility of schedule, positive assessment, and fairness influenced the overall grades of students. The results suggests which aspects of learning environment that can be manipulated by architectural educators to improve the performance of their students. The study of the learning environment of architecture students still appears to be relatively unexplored. The value of this study therefore lies in its exploration of the perceptions of the learning environment from the point of view of students.

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An examination is a formal test of a person's knowledge or proficiency in a particular subject or skill. An often time, the approach of an examination is accompanied by examination phobia on students, which suggests that the examination period is not always a pleasant one. Architectural jury for design studio works is the equivalent of examination for written courses; hence, students perceive it with mixed feelings. Apart from being an examination, the jury also presents an opportunity for students to learn in an atmosphere that can either be jocular, antagonistic or reassuring. Despite the age long tradition of the jury evaluation system, there are few literatures that have assessed the perception of students towards its use and suitability as a means of performance measurement. The purpose of this study is to investigate students' perception of the jury system as an integral pedagogical process of evaluating design studio works. Data was collected through a survey of two purposively selected schools using a structured questionnaire as instrument of data collection. The respondents were students across the 3rd to 4th and 5th to 6 th year of undergraduate and postgraduate study respectively. Data obtained was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings from the study would be useful in the development of national academic policies for Nigerian Schools of Architecture towards improving students' acceptance of the jury process as a tool for learning and assessment on one hand, and also to improve their performance in the jury on the other hand.

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Student gender and learning styles have been discovered to sometimes impact on the performance of architecture students. Scholars also assert that learning styles of students may metamorphose as they progress in school of architecture. Using the Inventory of Learning styles (ILS) developed by Felder and Soloman (1993) and fifty (50) first year architecture students in a private university in Nigeria as a sample, the authors have embarked on a longitudinal study which seeks to investigate the relationship between the learning styles of students of architecture and their performance as they progress in their study of architecture. First, the ILS was administered to the students to determine their learning styles. The individual learning styles were then juxtaposed with the students' overall semester performance scores. The results were analysed to determine how these varied by gender. This paper reports the findings for the first stage of the study.