Architectural and Urban Education in Egypt in the Post Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Quality of education is a global Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to be achieved by the united nations by 2030. The covid-19 pandemic resulted in a significant problem in education worldwide and Egypt with problems related to the shift to distance learning and accessibility to technology and facilities supporting this shift. This paper aims to contribute to the currently ongoing research that asses the changes in architecture and urban education due to the Coronavirus pandemic, including the shift to distance learning in the practical courses that initially need studio work. The state of distance education via the Internet is difficult for architectural teaching curricula. Most studio environment courses require in-class follow-up. In developing countries like Egypt, not all architecture schools are equipped to move to e-learning, and most have not dealt with this before. This paper assesses student satisfaction and analyzes the entire process of distance learning in practical architectural courses during the coronavirus pandemic in Egypt. the research applies a quantitative and qualitative approach. A questionnaire was designed and distributed; 304 students from 17 Egyptian schools of architecture responded. A survey and series of interviews were completed among twelve schools of architecture in Egypt to analyze their responses during the crises and study the shift to e-learning in teaching the practical courses. The paper shows that the psychological effect and working solo from home have affected the students the most. There is a need to solve the internet problems, train the staff and the students to use the online tools for virtual classes, and provide a stable e-learning platform. The future of the traditional studio environment is under questioning. This study responds to the urgent need to evaluate the effect of Covid-19 on architecture education and to question the studio environment in the future to achieve a sustainable higher education in schools of architecture in Egypt.

The attitudes of landscape architecture students towards distance and face-to-face education methods and the effects of the two education methods on academic achievement in the project course

“…It was emphasized that changes in instructional methods, structural reforms, and educational system improvements were required (Asadpour, 2021 ). Elrawy and Abouelmagd ( 2021 ) emphasized that distance education, which was implemented in architecture education in Egypt after the covid-19 pandemic, was not suitable for the architectural education curricula, and most courses required constant follow-up in the studio environment. They stated that not all architecture schools were adequately equipped to switch to e-learning in a developing country such as Egypt.…”

Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on architectural education: bibliometric and content analyses

“…This situation has raised the interest of many researchers around the world, who have investigated it from various perspectives, such as exploring students' perception, satisfaction and evaluation of online learning (Peimani and Kamalipour, 2021b;Koh and Wong, 2021;Ceylan et al, 2021;Asadpour, 2021;Bakir and Alsaadani, 2022;Komarzy nska-Swie sciak et al, 2021;Alkhalil et al, 2021;Alnusairat et al, 2021;Elrawy and Abouelmagd, 2021); solving the challenges due to COVID-19 and proposing guidelines (Leon et al, 2021;G€ uler, 2022;Dennis, 2021); developing virtual reality (VR) approaches for education (Wu et al, 2021;Xi and Cong, 2022) and identifying facilitators and barriers for the adoption of online AE (Tandon et al, 2021). Most previous studies involved individual cases or a single country (e.g.…”

“…4.2.1 Main topic analysis. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected AE (Ceylan et al, 2021;Elrawy and Abouelmagd, 2021;Ibrahim et al, 2021), and the effects of the current pandemic on AE have been examined (Varma and Jafri, 2021;Asadpour, 2021;Bakir and Alsaadani, 2022). The major themes and issues of the research were determined based on an initial review of the sample (Table 6).…”

Metaverse in Heritage Conservation Evaluation “Using Fully Immersive Virtual Reality Techniques to Evaluate Preservation Quality”

“…After the Covid-19 pandemic, and the impact of it on Education generally, [24] and on Architecture Education specially [4], [6], [9], [11], [18], people are looking for a virtual world in which to escape from the horrors of reality, an idea that has re-emerged strongly with the world of "Metaverse." The term "Metaverse" appeared from few months, it consists of the prefix "meta" (meaning beyond) and "verse" (from "universe"); the term is usually used to describe the concept of a future iteration of the internet, consisting of a continuous, shared, 3D virtual spaces that are connected in a perceived virtual universe.…”