Using virtual platforms in Architectural Education to manage covid-19 An applied study at Horus University-Egypt

Abstract

In view of the changes that afflicted the world during the pandemic period of covid-19, which led to a different international perspective of digital technology and e-learning, which highlighted the urgent need to develop educational platforms to cope with those variables and different fields of education so that they can simulate and develop the full form of traditional education. Consequently, the term hybrid education, a concept that is not new, has emerged. It aims to mix teaching methods and strategies with various technological means to produce a hybrid learning system. The study aims to show the most important prerequisites for teaching the design curricula as they represent scientific contents of a special teaching nature that requires direct communication with the students and methods to teach them in light of the future developments using electronic platforms to bridge the gap between the tangible reality of traditional teaching systems and the aspired future towards adopting atypical teaching trends and employing the capabilities of electronic platforms to support the teaching requirements of the practical curricula and to assist those in charge of teaching with the modern methods that are compatible with the requirements of the curriculum and ways of activating those methods during crises time, such as the covid-19 pandemic. In addition, the study aims to promote the idea that the teaching process is a system of joint cooperation between the staff members and the students and between the students themselves in the form of an interactive collective work. The research adopted the application of the experiment on Microsoft platform for the first year students in the Department of Architecture, University of Horus. Being the first years of specialization in the university in addition to the university's modernity with no previous design experience, it was highly complicated.