Reviewing assessment methods in architectural design courses: Towards approaches for pedagogical enhancement

Assessment in architectural design education remains contested due to the challenge of evaluating creative, open-ended work while balancing reliability, fairness, authenticity, and learning value. Although jury-based assessment has received substantial scholarly attention, design examinations remain comparatively underexplored despite their continued use in many schools. Addressing this gap, this study comparatively examined examinations and juries through the perspectives of students and instructors within the Egyptian context using a mixed-method survey design. Data were collected from 216 students and 61 instructors across 28 universities, combining quantitative ratings of assessment quality constructs, preference-based questions, and qualitative responses. The findings indicate that examinations and juries are perceived as complementary rather than competing methods. Examinations were more strongly associated with reliability, transparency, fairness, and individual accountability, whereas juries were more strongly linked to authenticity, feedback value, communication development, and positive learning impact. Stakeholder preferences also differed regarding formats, durations, assessor composition, and grading approaches, reflecting contrasting priorities between opportunity, rigor, and feasibility. Qualitative themes highlighted recurring concerns regarding time pressure in examinations and subjectivity in juries, while also confirming the value of combining structured and dialogic assessment. Based on these triangulated findings, the study proposes an empirically derived framework that aligns assessment methods with progressive academic stages, learning outcomes, and quality priorities, while recommending stronger validity in examinations and stronger reliability in juries. The study contributes empirical evidence to ongoing debates on assessment in design education and offers an empirically grounded framework for pedagogical enhancement in architectural programs.