NAAB 1998

Guide to Student Performance Criteria

Preface

An Overview of the Guide

This guide is written expressly for the faculty and students of professional degree programs in architecture. It begins with a brief overview of the parameters for accrediting professional degree programs, including a list of the twelve conditions your program must address to maintain its accreditation. However, the guide's primary purpose is to inform you about one of these conditions, namely the student performance criteria. These are areas every student must demonstrate who graduates from an accredited architecture program. The criteria define the minimum requirements for your professional education in architecture.

An Overview of NAAB Accreditation

The National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) is the sole agency authorized to accredit US professional degree programs in architecture. Since most state registration boards in the United States require any applicant for licensure to have graduated from a NAAB-accredited program, obtaining such a degree is an essential aspect of preparing for the professional practice of architecture. While graduation from a NAAB-accredited program does not assure registration, the accrediting process is intended to verify that each accredited program substantially meets those standards that, as a whole, comprise an appropriate education for an architect.

The curriculum of a NAAB-accredited program includes general studies, professional studies, and electives, which together comprise a liberal education in architecture. The curriculum ensures that graduates will be technically competent, critical thinkers who are capable of defining multiple career paths within a changing societal context. More specifically, the NAAB requires an accredited program to produce graduates who: are competent in a range of intellectual, spatial, technical, and interpersonal skills; understand the historical, sociocultural, and environmental context of architecture; are able to solve architectural design problems, including the integration of technical systems and health and safety requirements; and comprehend architects' roles and responsibilities in society.

Although the NAAB recognizes that the areas and levels of excellence will vary among programs, all accredited professional degree programs must demonstrate compliance with each of the following twelve NAAB Conditions:

1 Program Response to the NAAB Perspectives

• 1.1 Architecture Education and the Academic Context
  1.2 Architecture Education and the Students
  1.3 Architecture Education and Registration
  1.4 Architecture Education and the Profession
  1.5 Architecture Education and Society

2 Program Self-Assessment

3 Public Information

4 Social Equity

5 Human Resources

6 Human Resource Development

7 Physical Resources

8 Information Resources

9 Financial Resources

10 Administrative Structure

11 Professional Degrees and Curriculum

12 Student Performance Criteria

The last condition, Student Performance Criteria, is presented in this guide exactly as it appears in the 1998 Conditions and Procedures, which specifies in detail the requirements of accreditation.

Requirements for Presenting Student Work

During an accreditation site visit, a lockable, reasonably soundproof room must be set up in your school building so that the visiting team can review and discuss the program's documentation in confidence. Prior to the site visit, the program head usually discusses with the team chair the content and organization of the team room, which must contain fully labeled and easily accessible exhibits of student work. Exhibits must include examples of both minimum pass and high achievement, be of sufficient quantity to ensure that all graduates are meeting the performance criteria, have been executed since the previous site visit, and span no less than a single academic year. If more than one professional degree program is being reviewed, student work from each program must be clearly distinguishable. While a range of work must be displayed for each required course, it is not necessary to present the complete output of a studio, lecture, or seminar.

The means of presenting student work is at your program's discretion, but each piece must be cross-referenced to the course matrix and criteria it addresses, contain the date, and indicate its assessment from minimum to high achievement. Exhibits in spaces outside the team room can augment, but not substitute for, the team room exhibits; they should be identified in a manner that is consistent with the team room displays, except that indications of minimum and high pass may be omitted in public displays. Class assignments must be available for all projects presented, which ideally will furnish examples by several different students or teams.

Learning More About Accreditation

For more information about the accrediting process, faculty and students should read the 1998 Conditions and Procedures, referred to as the C and P. You may also be interested in reviewing your program's most recent Architecture Program Report, referred to as the APR , Visiting Report, referred to as the VTR, and the Annual Reports, referred to as the ARs. All these documents can be found in your program's library. [Actually, they're on file in the Architecture Office and in the AIAS Office. –Bruce]

Student Performance Criteria

The program must ensure that all its graduates possess the skills and knowledge defined by the performance criteria set out below, which constitute the minimum requirements for meeting the demands of an internship leading to registration for practice.

The program must provide evidence that all its graduates have satisfied each criterion through required course work. If transfer credits are granted for courses taken at other institutions, evidence must be provided that the course are comparable to those offered in the program.

The list of performance criteria begins with fundamental skills and knowledge, continues with technical skills and knowledge, and concludes with a focus on practice and societal roles. This sequence is intended to foster an integrated approach to learning that cuts across subject categories. These criteria encompass three levels of accomplishment. [1]

Awareness: familiarity with specific information, including facts, definitions, concepts, rules, methods, processes, or settings. Students can correctly recall information without necessarily being able to paraphrase or summarize it.

Understanding: assimilation and comprehension of information. Students can correctly paraphrase or summarize information without necessarily being able to relate it to other material or see its fullest implications.

Ability: skill in relating specific information to the accomplishment of tasks. Students can correctly select the information that is appropriate to a situation and apply it to the solution of specific problems.

The NAAB intends to establish performance criteria that assist programs in preparing students for the broad requirements of the profession, while also encouraging educational practices suited to the circumstances of particular programs. In addition to assessing whether student performance meets the expectations of professional education outlined by the criteria, the visiting team will also assess performance in relation to the program's stated curricular goals and content. While the NAAB stipulates the student performance criteria that must be satisfied, it specifies neither the educational programs nor the forms of student work that may serve as evidence of having satisfied these criteria. Programs are therefore encouraged to develop unique learning and teaching strategies, methods, and materials to satisfy these criteria. The NAAB will consider innovative methods for satisfying the criteria, provided the program has a formal evaluation process for assessing student achievement of these criteria and documents the results.

The APR must include the following information:

-- An overview of the program's curricular goals and content

-- A graphic matrix that cross-references each required course with the performance criterion(a) it fulfills.

For the purposes of accreditation, graduating students must demonstrate awareness, understanding or ability in 37 areas.

Footnotes

[1] As an example of how the team would approach these levels of accomplishment, consider the area of environmental conservation. Possible levels of accomplishment in this area are-- Awareness: the capacity to correctly recall a basic definition of environmental conservation;-- Understanding: the capacity to correctly paraphrase or summarize information about such principles of environmental conservation as minimizing building footprints, reusing and recycling buildings, avoiding the use of non-renewable resources, and avoiding materials that cannot be recycled or recovered; and-- Ability: the capacity to correctly apply these principles in the resolution of a design project.

The NAAB criterion on environmental conservation requires only that students demonstrate “understanding.”