Online Learning for STEM Subjects

International Examples of Technologies and Pedagogies in Use

Mark Childs, Robby Soetanto

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367736477
• eBook ISBN: 9781317389873
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Construction & Architectural Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The Global Collaboration initiatives related in this book are examples of how educators have experimented with different mechanisms to provide science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education programmes through information and communication technologies. In many cases, these programmes have looked at the allied personal communication and collaboration skills that students of these subjects also need: the so-called STEM+ curriculum.

In particular, these approaches to STEM+ provision show how the internationalization of education can be made more effective and accessible through the exploitation of collaborative technologies and non-traditional pedagogies. The approaches address the following themes:

• technologies for distance learning and collaboration
• pedagogies for online learning
• remote communication and collaboration

An international perspective is made possible within the book through the inclusion of authors from North America, Europe and Asia. These authors present case studies from technology-enhanced learning projects over the past six years.

Part I

Lead case study

International collaboration for multidisciplinary built environment education

1 International collaboration for multidisciplinary built environment education

Robby Soetanto, Mark Childs and Stephen Austin

Introduction

Part One of this book details the findings from two interlinked projects. The first of these ran from 2010 to 2012 and was funded by the Hewlett Packard Catalyst Program. The title of this project was Learning to Create a Better Built Environment, and it consisted of a collaboration between Coventry University (CU) in the United Kingdom and Ryerson University (RU) in Toronto, Canada.

In July 2013, these collaborators, together with the addition of Loughborough University, also in the UK, were awarded funding by the UK’s Higher Education Academy to continue this work with a follow-on project. The project (BIM-Hub) continued until March 2015.

The following chapters in Part One detail the findings of these projects; to provide a context for these findings, this chapter describes how the projects ran and the external factors which led to these projects being constructed.

Context for the learning to create a better built environment project

The first of the two projects was influenced by a number of parties inside and outside participating universities. Being final-year students, participating students had experienced learning within the context of a working group. They also learnt people skills in the management of group work and team dynamics. However, this was a major departure from the normal practice for group work within the universities, and so, although the direct line management within the universities (i.e. heads of department) were very supportive of learning innovation, as it aligned well with the current campaign for applying innovative learning in the faculties, they were a little nervous of the impact on the final year students. The concern was that if this ‘experiment’ did not go according to plan, it might create resentment from the students. This was particularly true in the UK given the increasing emphasis of the National Student Satisfaction survey (NSS), which informs the national subject ranking (e.g. league tables) and which therefore has an impact on future student recruitment. To mitigate this potential issue, the tutors attempted to balance the workload and experience between participating and non-participating students.

Outside the university, this innovative learning was designed to meet the expectation of employers (construction companies, consultants, architects etc.) for the internationalisation of education in the built environment (BE). The courses/ programmes in the two institutions were accredited by professional institutions in the UK and Canada and therefore had to meet their accreditation requirements. In the existing educational system, activities in the courses should be justifiable to external examiners from other universities. Members of advisory boards of the courses could have an impact on the delivery of the project. The project existed due to sponsorship from Hewlett Packard Catalyst Initiative and therefore determined the way the outcomes of learning were collected and examined. With the expectation that the project continues in the future, there was a need to identify potential future sponsors for the activities. The innovativeness of the project would also provide a good input for the course marketing team to talk to prospective students about the innovative approach of learning in the institutions.

As a proactive response to the increasingly competitive educational environment and a shift in modern educational agenda, a new pedagogical approach, based on problem-based learning principles, was implemented within the department at CU. The aim was to promote student engagement, retention and employability. In addition, part of the university’s mission statement was to “aspire to be a dynamic, global, enterprising university”. By aspiring to be a global university the university aims to “ensure that every course contains a substantive international element that requires students: to conduct joint projects with peers in another university overseas mediated via digital technology”. International mobility was seen as critical to the success of construction business, both today and in the future. An increasingly interconnected and globalised construction sector means that individuals often have to work collaboratively with people in different parts of the world who they have not even met before, let alone worked with. Construction work, by the very process it undertakes to produce the final product, tends to be formed from multidisciplinary teams. These multidisciplinary teams can bring innovative products and processes aimed at benefitting the construction process. However, effective teamwork skills in terms of management, leadership and communication are needed if construction projects are going to meet their prescribed output. This was confirmed by a UK government-commissioned review on the skills for creating sustainable communities highlighting the importance of communication and professional skills for built environment graduates (civil and building engineering), which require further development (Egan, 2004). Therefore, the activities described in Part One of this book were intended to implement the innovative pedagogical approach whilst addressing the increasing need for student internationalisation within the construction industry.

The study design

The study was undertaken within the context of international institutions, which educated students for future careers in the BE sectors. The main focus was the final-year undergraduate students, although some aspects of the study were conducted with the MSc postgraduate students. From the UK institution, in the first round, 35 out of 249 undergraduate students participated voluntarily in the study. This was closely matched by the number of students from Canada: 37 students from the entire cohort. Participating UK students studied civil and/or structural engineering, whereas Canadian students studied architecture. One team typically comprised an equal number of students from both institutions, four from UK and four from Canada. Two hundred and fourteen non-participating UK students who worked on the same building project but with their co-located team provide a comparative ‘control’ group for analysis at later stages of the project. Studying in international institutions, they comprise a mixture of ethnic and educational background with English being their first or second language. Most of them were in their early 20s, and only few really had real industry experience.

The investigation at postgraduate level included students with full- and part-time modes who participated in one module. They were assigned a piece of group coursework and submitted a critical assessment of how their group work was mediated by communication technology, including comments that compared the collocated and distanced collaborating groups.

The students formed multidisciplinary groups to design a new academic departmental building. A project scenario was developed based on a real academic building, which would be built in the future to replace the existing building. The project lasted for one academic year. This design project represents a ‘problem’ to be solved by students in groups, and this mimics an authentic industry practice in the real working world. It was considered an integration of theory and knowledge that they obtained earlier for practical application within a real-world context. Apart from the application of the knowledge and skills within the specific subject domains, the work in the project was intended to develop the students’ ‘soft’ skills, including people management (face to face or virtual), communication, teamwork and time and self-management, which are considered important for future employability and increasingly being emphasis by the employers in recruitment. The project was designed for a more engaging mode for learning.

A project briefing was devised that allowed the teams the opportunity to successfully work together within the function of a design-and-build context. Academics from both institutions were involved in the development of the brief to ensure that it met the learning outcomes of their respective degrees, namely to “demonstrate integration within a group of various construction professions, previously learnt knowledge and skills for a major scenario-based project, within a design and construction environment” and to “demonstrate a critical approach to skills through teamwork and continuous personal improvement”. The project briefing was communicated early in the academic year before the formation of the teams. The comprehensive project brief included (i) description of purposes of building (i.e. scenario), requirements of facilities (e.g. rooms, area, environmental aspects), site location and constraints (relationships with the existing building and facilities in the surrounding area) and schedule of accommodation, (ii) requirements on group formation and work processes – team leadership, management and documentation (meetings, roles of individual student) and (iii) assessment of tasks with detailed requirements for two project phases, and peer assessment using the WebPA system (see Wilkinson and Lamb, 2010 for description on WebPA). In addition to these, design guidance of building standards, structural design codes, photographs of the site and poster and presentations were also provided.

The brief was fully reviewed by academic teams from both universities to ensure that the tasks that the students were being asked to complete would be at the appropriate academic level and also offer a range of multidisciplinary tasks to the virtual teams to undertake. The project was split into two phases to coincide with academic year structures: phase 1 – September to December and phase 2 – January to April. The multidisciplinary tasks for phase 1 (design) were to architecturally and structurally design the proposed building including parking, drainage and accessibility, provide an initial cost estimate and outline specification. The tasks for phase 2 (tender) were to finalise the architectural and structural design including parking, drainage and accessibility, provide reports on quality and health and safety and create a programme for the construction of the project.

Local groups of four students were formed in the participating universities. The teams reviewed the tasks in the project brief and identified previous technical skills to meet the tasks. The teams then linked with another team from the other institution to form one virtual team of eight students (four from the UK and four from Canada). As the teams had not worked together before, they needed a way of getting to know each other professionally. This was undertaken through a poster presentation. They were asked to identify people management skills (e.g. leadership, teamworking, communication) that they could demonstrate. Each group was asked to produce one A2-sized poster which should contain technical and management skills of the team, with a view of attracting offers from counterpart teams. The electronic exchange of posters was coordinated by academics from both institutions, who were available to oversee this process and mediate where there were any problems with team choices. The aim was to form the strongest team. Evidence from previous experience was also included in the poster. The teams reviewed the different team posters with a view to negotiating and agreeing with a counterpart team for the formation of a company. The whole exercise was aimed at developing comprehensive understanding of the project brief and reviewing potential strengths and weaknesses of the team members. This exercise developed their skills for identifying expertise to complement the existing team members. Having formed the virtual teams, the students started working on the project. To help the initial process of communication, the first task focused on team formation and planning of the main technical outputs. The ‘companies’ were asked to plan the forthcoming technical tasks and write reports showing the interdependency within the tasks and how they intended to manage the team. This then led into the specific technical tasks that the students undertook.

An important emphasis of the project was communication that the students needed to undertake as distributed teams. The teams conducted weekly meetings and appointed a company leader and secretary to be rotated every four or five weeks, thus enabling each member of the team to carry out each role. The team leaders chaired the weekly project meeting, monitored and co-ordinated the work of the group, ensured that submission dates wer...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Editors’ introduction
• Author biographies
• Part I Lead case study: international collaboration for multidisciplinary built environment education
• Part II Complementary case studies
• Index