Determination the current status of digital design courses in interior architecture undergraduate education and the opinions of academy

Interior architecture is a field of expertise that is related to many technical and creative disciplines and is designed by considering the functional and aesthetic criteria of the space located at the intersection of science and art. In this context, interior architecture education is aimed to convey all the equipment that a designer should have by adopting the returns and needs of the age. The benefits of the digital revolution are improving and changing the scope of both interior architecture practice and education. Comparing the suitability of the curriculum to which design students are subject to the requirements of the period and updating the identified deficiencies are important in terms of educating designers with equal qualifications. The study has two main objectives: to determine the distribution of digital design courses depending on the type of university (state/private) and department (interior architecture / interior architecture and environmental design) and to determine the views and expectations of academics who teach digital design courses. Digital design courses were analyzed by content analysis method and converted into statistical data in the SPSS program. The views of the lecturers on the digital design courses obtained by the survey method were also analyzed in the SPSS program. When the common findings obtained by content analysis and survey method are examined, it has been determined that there are certain differences in terms of whether the digital design courses are compulsory or elective in the curricula, the semesters they are given, the credit weights, the course contents, and the tools used in the curricula depending on the type of university and department. It was concluded that the lecturers had different views and expectations about the software, programming language, and digital fabrication courses and the tools used in these courses, but they positively evaluated the effect of the digital design courses on the interior architecture undergraduate education.