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Workshop and Individual Feedback on Studio Presentations for the School of Architecture (MArch)

Since 2016, the EAC project team has collaborated with Prof Peter Ferretto from the School of Architecture to support students’ presentations in ARCH5110 Design Studios. Entering the sixth year of collaboration amid the MArch curriculum changes, the team has modified the intervention arrangements to increase their impact. With growing interest to expand the project and several years of positive feedback from students and collaborators, the total number of studios receiving EAC support has extended from one to four this year. Dr Fun Liu and Mr Johnson Chan are the frontline teachers responsible for supporting two studios each. Dr Fun Liu, the designated frontline teacher since the launch of this collaboration, conducted two Zoom sessions for students in the ARCH5110 design studios taught by Prof Tat Lam, Mr Wataru Shinji, and Ms Lily Zhang. The sessions were about four hours each and were held on 21 February 2022 and 11 April 2022, prior to students’ midterm and final review studio presentations respectively. Each session began with a 45-minute workshop on public speaking and presentation skills to prep students for their rehearsals, followed by the provision of instant feedback after each individual presentation. Dr Liu’s workshops focused on PST (Pause, Stress, Tone) and nonverbal techniques for more expressive and elaborate presentations. Since the studio presentations are held online this year due to the pandemic, Dr Liu adjusted her workshop content to cater to this mode. She used professional Ted Talk videos to demonstrate presentation skills with a hands-on approach and integrated many warm up activities and breakout room tasks to encourage students to step out of their comfort zones. Students’ presentation rehearsals were recorded and distributed back for their self-review. The EAC project team appreciates the collaborators’ enthusiasm for the project and looks forward to increasing the reach of these interventions in the near future.