Door to the Future, Understanding Portals of Ancient Seljuk Colleges

Symbols of artistic features on architecture employed by people living in Konya in the 13th Century (circa 1258) have been examined to express their philosophy of art and culture. University students who are educated to become art teachers in secondary and high schools living around these architectural inheritances are supposed to have the same cultural background, but it was found that they did not recognize these historical and artistic values in spite of the art lessons given to them. The purpose of this study is to analyze the output of the students’ general art knowledge about the neighboring art environment when the teaching method in lessons is changed. After changing the methods of teaching, according to DBAE requirements, students were asked to design their own architectural portal and prepare related stories for Ince-minareli Seljuk College. Artistic features engraved on the selected portal of the Seljuk College and student design works were compared and differences and similarities between them were presented by using semiotic studies. The study suggests that through this teaching and learning strategy students gain more understanding of the artistic features of their art heritage