Architecture students' peer learning in informal situations by lens of the community of practice - one case study

This paper discovers peer learning environments by the lens of the community of practice, investigating architecture students' peer learning experiences in informal situations when they are outside formal timetable activities in the Welsh School of Architecture (WSA), Cardiff University. This paper associated undergraduate architecture students who experienced virtual learning and physical learning during and after the pandemic, to compare the ways that those students constitute the community of practice within both physical and virtual environments. Taking observations, interviews, and focus groups, those students' peer learning experiences provided a whole view of the thematic characteristics that they constitute communities of practice in different learning environments. Those findings are consistent with previous studies conducted with architecture students but also extended that research by specifying the relationship between peer learning in informal situations and the community of practice within two different contexts. Two main categories of communities of practice, which are homogenous and dispersive ones according to such thematic characteristics, were found in this study.