Emerging cad and bim trends in the aec education: An analysis from students\u27 perspective

As the construction industry is moving towards collaborative design and construction practices globally, training the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) students professionally related to CAD and BIM became a necessity rather than an option. The advancement in the industry has led to collaborative modelling environments, such as building information modelling (BIM), as an alternative to computer-aided design (CAD) drafting. Educators have shown interest in integrating BIM into the AEC curriculum, where teaching CAD and BIM simultaneously became a challenge due to the differences of two systems. One of the major challenges was to find the appropriate teaching techniques, as educators were unaware of the AEC students’ learning path in CAD and BIM. In order to make sure students learn and benefit from both CAD and BIM, the learning path should be revealed from students’ perspective. This paper summarizes the background and differences of CAD and BIM education, and how the transition from CAD to BIM can be achieved for collaborative working practices. The analysis was performed on freshman and junior level courses to learn the perception of students about CAD and BIM education. A dual-track survey was used to collect responses from AEC students in four consecutive years. The results showed that students prefer BIM to CAD in terms of the friendliness of the user-interface, help functions, and self-detection of mistakes. The survey also revealed that most of the students believed in the need for a BIM specialty course with Construction Management (CM), Structure, and Mechanical-Electrical-Plumbing (MEP) areas. The benefits and challenges of both CAD and BIM-based software from students’ perspectives helps to improve the learning outcomes of CAD/BIM courses to better help students in their learning process, and works as a guideline for educators on how to design and teach CAD/BIM courses simultaneously by considering the learning process and perspectives of students. © 2018 The autho

Pervasive Parallel And Distributed Computing In A Liberal Arts College Curriculum

We present a model for incorporating parallel and distributed computing (PDC) throughout an undergraduate CS curriculum. Our curriculum is designed to introduce students early to parallel and distributed computing topics and to expose students to these topics repeatedly in the context of a wide variety of CS courses. The key to our approach is the development of a required intermediate-level course that serves as a introduction to computer systems and parallel computing. It serves as a requirement for every CS major and minor and is a prerequisite to upper-level courses that expand on parallel and distributed computing topics in different contexts. With the addition of this new course, we are able to easily make room in upper-level courses to add and expand parallel and distributed computing topics. The goal of our curricular design is to ensure that every graduating CS major has exposure to parallel and distributed computing, with both a breadth and depth of coverage. Our curriculum is particularly designed for the constraints of a small liberal arts college, however, much of its ideas and its design are applicable to any undergraduate CS curriculum

On Integrating Student Empirical Software Engineering Studies with Research and Teaching Goals

Background: Many empirical software engineering studies use students as subjects and are conducted as part of university courses. Aim: We aim at reporting our experiences with using guidelines for integrating empirical studies with our research and teaching goals. Method: We document our experience from conducting three studies with graduate students in two software architecture courses. Results: Our results show some problems that we faced when following the guidelines and deviations we made from the original guidelines. Conclusions: Based on our results we propose recommendations for empirical software engineering studies that are integrated in university courses.

Recruitment, Preparation, Retention: A case study of computing culture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Computer science is seeing a decline in enrollment at all levels of education, including undergraduate and graduate study. This paper reports on the results of a study conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign which evaluated students attitudes regarding three areas which can contribute to improved enrollment in the Department of Computer Science: Recruitment, preparation and retention. The results of our study saw two themes. First, the department's tight research focus appears to draw significant attention from other activities -- such as teaching, service, and other community-building activities -- that are necessary for a department's excellence. Yet, as demonstrated by our second theme, one partial solution is to better promote such activities already employed by the department to its students and faculty. Based on our results, we make recommendations for improvements and enhancements based on the current state of practice at peer institutions.Comment: 37 pages, 13 figures. For better quality figures, please download the .pdf from http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/research/techreports.php?report=UIUCDCS-R-2007-281

Teaching Software Engineering through Robotics

This paper presents a newly-developed robotics programming course and reports the initial results of software engineering education in robotics context. Robotics programming, as a multidisciplinary course, puts equal emphasis on software engineering and robotics. It teaches students proper software engineering -- in particular, modularity and documentation -- by having them implement four core robotics algorithms for an educational robot. To evaluate the effect of software engineering education in robotics context, we analyze pre- and post-class survey data and the four assignments our students completed for the course. The analysis suggests that the students acquired an understanding of software engineering techniques and principles

Strategies and mechanisms for electronic peer review

This journal article published at the October 2000 Frontiers in Education Conference discusses strategies and mechanisms for electronic peer review. It outlines a peer-grading system for review of student assignments over the World-Wide Web called Peer Grader. The system allows authors and reviewers to communicate and authors to update their submissions. This system facilitates collaborative learning and makes it possible to break up a large project into smaller portions. The article summarizes a unique and innovative method of peer-review. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

Fostering Creative Thinking and Reflexive Evaluation in Searching: Instructional Scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development in Information Literacy Acquisition

Searching for information, which is not as easy as many students believe, requires creativity, formative evaluation, and persistence. Cultivating proficient and expert searches requires more than the vicarious and enactive experiences described by Bandura1 that are frequently employed in traditional library instruction: students need to be supported and coached in working in their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which stimulates learning.

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning

TLAD 2010 Proceedings:8th international workshop on teaching, learning and assesment of databases (TLAD)

This is the eighth in the series of highly successful international workshops on the Teaching, Learning and Assessment of Databases (TLAD 2010), which once again is held as a workshop of BNCOD 2010 - the 27th International Information Systems Conference. TLAD 2010 is held on the 28th June at the beautiful Dudhope Castle at the Abertay University, just before BNCOD, and hopes to be just as successful as its predecessors.The teaching of databases is central to all Computing Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems and Information Technology courses, and this year, the workshop aims to continue the tradition of bringing together both database teachers and researchers, in order to share good learning, teaching and assessment practice and experience, and further the growing community amongst database academics. As well as attracting academics from the UK community, the workshop has also been successful in attracting academics from the wider international community, through serving on the programme committee, and attending and presenting papers.This year, the workshop includes an invited talk given by Richard Cooper (of the University of Glasgow) who will present a discussion and some results from the Database Disciplinary Commons which was held in the UK over the academic year. Due to the healthy number of high quality submissions this year, the workshop will also present seven peer reviewed papers, and six refereed poster papers. Of the seven presented papers, three will be presented as full papers and four as short papers. These papers and posters cover a number of themes, including: approaches to teaching databases, e.g. group centered and problem based learning; use of novel case studies, e.g. forensics and XML data; techniques and approaches for improving teaching and student learning processes; assessment techniques, e.g. peer review; methods for improving students abilities to develop database queries and develop E-R diagrams; and e-learning platforms for supporting teaching and learning

From Gatekeeping to Engagement: A Multicontextual, Mixed Method Study of Student Academic Engagement in Introductory STEM Courses.

The lack of academic engagement in introductory science courses is considered by some to be a primary reason why students switch out of science majors. This study employed a sequential, explanatory mixed methods approach to provide a richer understanding of the relationship between student engagement and introductory science instruction. Quantitative survey data were drawn from 2,873 students within 73 introductory science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses across 15 colleges and universities, and qualitative data were collected from 41 student focus groups at eight of these institutions. The findings indicate that students tended to be more engaged in courses where the instructor consistently signaled an openness to student questions and recognizes her/his role in helping students succeed. Likewise, students who reported feeling comfortable asking questions in class, seeking out tutoring, attending supplemental instruction sessions, and collaborating with other students in the course were also more likely to be engaged. Instructional implications for improving students' levels of academic engagement are discussed