Biases shown by juries during architecture design assessment sessions

The interaction between teacher and student in an architecture design studio is an important part of the teaching/learning process because it generates a kind of conversation that solidates the ‘learning by doing’ of teaching. This paper attempts to closely examine the jury system during the design assessment session. By monitoring the jury examination of several architectural schools’ fifth-stage graduation projects this paper highlights the various biases that are present during those sessions. The results revealed that most biases that appear during the assessment sessions are those that primarily occur when jurors focus their attention on one or two options despite the presence of other options. Early identification and disclosure of jury panels, together with the strategic scheduling of evaluation sessions, can alleviate biases that emerge during jury assessments and potentially convert those biases into beneficial and constructive inputs for the student's projects.