Fostering metacognition in the design studio: The effect of minimal interventions on architectural students’ metacognitive awareness

This study investigates the role of metacognitive interventions in the design studio and the relationship between metacognitive awareness and design learning through quasi-experimental research. The study was conducted at an undergraduate design studio course with the participation of 80 fourth-year students divided into experimental and control groups. In the study, minimal metacognitive interventions prompting students to reflect on their design project and design process were administered in the experimental group during an academic term embedded in the design course. The Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) was applied to both the experimental group and the control group as a pre-test and post-test to determine the impact of minimal interventions on metacognitive awareness. In addition, the relationship between metacognitive awareness and design course grade and the type and level of this relationship were analysed. According to the findings, metacognitive interventions significantly enhanced metacognitive awareness levels of students with lower metacognitive awareness. However, interventions did not result in a statistically significant difference in the design course grade. Furthermore, a moderate positive correlation was found between design course grades and pre-MAI scores, i.e., pre-MAI scores explained about 20 % of the variance in the design course grades. In conclusion, minimal interventions are beneficial at least to students with lower levels of metacognitive awareness and potentially more substantial interventions would be even more helpful to these students and other students with a higher level of metacognitive awareness.