رویکرد مبتنی بر نظریه بازی برای تحلیل های یادگیری مشارکتی در استودیوهای طراحی

Design studios are set up for cooperative learning and encourage peer communication throughout the design process. However, cooperative learning is difficult to achieve, because students in a studio are also competitors who make every effort to outperform their peers. A theoretical model based on the Prisoner's Dilemma game theory is proposed to analyse the complex behaviours of cooperation and competition in design studios. The result of analysis suggests that inter-group competition, iterative peer assessment, and information transparency are critical factors in promoting cooperative learning in design studios.

Using the model based on the Prisoner's Dilemma game, we can analyse how cooperative behaviour emerges in a design studio in which students compete with peers in a race to make the best design. Cooperative teams in a design studio could be formed initially by discrepancies in communication intensity among students. The level of cooperation among team members could be maintained if the students could judge their peers' work and estimate the risk of cooperative behaviour during the design process. Information technology facilitates communication so that the cost of knowledge sharing lessens while the frequency of information exchanges increases. Therefore, the process of structuring and restructuring the communication network in a design studio would be accelerated. The preceding discussion leads to the following suggestions for fostering cooperative learning in a design studio. First, cooperative learning in a design studio relies not only on information technology, which increases communication efficiency, but also on how studio participants are motivated to cooperate. Second, competition is the driving force behind cooperation. Inter-group competition motivates individuals to interact with each other and to form cooperative teams in order to beat other individuals and teams. Third, if the setup environment of the studio allows enough transparency for peer assessment during the design process, the cooperation–defection dilemma would eventually lead students to cooperate as teams or to break up initial teams into uncooperative individuals, rather than the quasi-cooperative state where cooperation and defection co-exist within a team. Fourth, cooperative learning emerges through a process of structuring and restructuring the social network of the studio. The process is analogous to the crystallisation of materials as temperatures drop and the structure of a material solidifies. In summary, cooperative learning can be enhanced by group assessments that encourage inter-group competition, iterative peer assessments during the design process, and a transparent information environment.