Re‐Engineering the Undergraduate Building Construction Program for the 21st Century

Abstract

This paper presents an integrative model developed this past year by the Building Construction (BC) Department at Virginia Tech (VT), designed to help each student master the competencies necessary to succeed in the 21st Century as a building constructor in a changing global market‐place. The curriculum described in this paper presents a dynamic, practical, applied academic model; balances the construction education concepts of practical experience based knowledge with academic inquiry; integrates people and communication skills with the pragmatic building construction skills; and provides a construction program that maintains a strong identity positioned between architecture and engineering. Strategically this task was accomplished by weaving vertical and horizontal integration into the BC curriculum at Virginia Tech. Results of this first year are presented, including lessons learned, external evaluations, and recommendations for adaptation.

Teaching to Mobilize Creative Experience

“…A more professionally involved faculty would improve the interaction between industry and academia, and improve a relationship that is at times lacking in trust and respect. (Auchey, Mills & Auchey, 1998). Long-term success depends on carefully defining the system in which classroom teaching effects other parts of faculty work, departmental and college operations, and external pressures (Fisher, Fairweather & Amey, 2002).…”

Training effectiveness of engineering students: A case study

“…The purpose of the formative assessment is to assess progress in meeting a project's or task's goals, whereas the purpose of the summative assessment is to evaluate the project's outcomes. A further classification of assessment of educational programmes rests on internal versus external (Auchey et al 1998), informal versus formal and continuous versus post programme evaluation. Whitelaw (1972) classified the evaluation of training into four distinct stages or levels as follows: (i) reactions evaluation: collection of information about what trainees express for improving a training programme; (ii) immediate outcome evaluation: studying the changes in knowledge (cognitive level), skills and attitudes immediately after training; (iii) intermediate outcome evaluation: sometime after the training; and (iv) ultimate outcome evaluation: the degree of learning at behaviour level, application of the knowledge in practice by virtue of internalization of the training inputs and improvement in performance level.…”

Experiences With Inter-Year Capstone Design Teams

“…The notion of interyear design teams receives support from the engineering education literature. There is evidence to suggest that integrating students with multiple skill and academic levels on a common design project enhances students' learning process in that it fosters productivity and complex problem-solving [1,2]. In their assessment of an integrated design project in a chemical engineering course involving first year and fourth year students, Giralt et al [3] argue that the learning experience benefits both junior and senior students alike.…”