Search

As makerspaces and fabrication labs enter schools as a means of motivating children to explore STEM fields, the lack of diversity in engineering and computing must be addressed. The Bots for Tots project explores the potential of leveraging deeper values and perspectives in making practices by engaging young children in designing and creating objects for others rather than for themselves. In this design case, we present outcomes from the first Bots for Tots implementation highlighting key design challenges and tradeoffs for (a) encouraging a personal relationship between builders and clients while retaining design complexity, and (b) ensuring productive prototyping while providing materials and tools with which designers are familiar. We also discuss revisions for a second iteration where we leverage an existing mentorship program to ensure close designer-client relationships, and constrain material choices throughout the construction process to encourage participants to focus on function and process during prototyping.

The construction industry is highly fragmented and is known for its adversarial culture, culminating in poor quality projects not completed on time or within budget. The aim of this study is thus to guide the design of quantity surveying (QS) programme curricula in order to help students develop the requisite knowledge and skills to work more collaboratively in their multidisciplinary future workplaces. A qualitative approach was considered appropriate as the authors were concerned with gathering an initial understanding of what students think of multidisciplinary learning. The data collection method used was a questionnaire developed by the Behaviours4Collaboration (B4C) team. Knowledge gaps were still found across all the key areas in which a future QS practitioner needs to be collaborative (either as a Project Contributor or as a Project Leader), despite the need for change instigated by the multidisciplinary revolution in building information modelling (BIM) education. The study concludes that universities will need to be selective in teaching, and innovative in reorienting, QS education so that a collaborative BIM education can be effected in stages, increasing in complexity as the students' technical knowledge grows. This will help students to build the competencies needed to make them future leaders. It will also support programme currency and delivery.

Technology and Engineering Education (T&EE) includes "engineering design challenges" to establish a connection to designing and problem-solving indicative of being an Engineer. Engineering design challenges involving bridges (or towers) have been a common feature of the discipline. These bridge design challenges ask students to design a bridge frequently using straws, popsicle sticks, or pasta; have constraints including amount of material used and length; and a basic process of build and then test to failure. Often prior to building a bridge, information is covered about the type/styles of bridges/trusses, general information about forces like tension and compression, and results of forces like bending and failure. Instruction related to bridge design almost never includes information about solving concurrent or nonconcurrent coplanar force systems, using methods to determine distributions of applied forces among truss members, or using methods to accurately predict the applied force that will result in truss failure. To establish a balance between practical and theoretical learning, this article intends to present truss design using the Method of Sections to design and predict the amount of weight causing truss failure.

When young students engage with activities aimed at improving spatial reasoning, there is potential to also improve learning and performance in practical mathematics problem-solving tasks, scientific inquiries, and other STEM-based tasks. In this study, students worked in pairs to problem solve through 3D construction. The aim was to assess whether collaboration might benefit students when solving spatial reasoning tasks. They found the benefits were more pronounced with students in Grade 2 than in Grade 1. The findings of this study were expected to inform teacher practice across a range of learning areas related to spatial reasoning.

Symbolic representation refers to the use of physical or psychological processes to represent an object in a symbolic form. The present study investigated the development of children's symbolic representation using a new measure of children's block constructions. Ninety children (44 girls) in three age groups (3-4, 4-5, and 5-6 years) were randomly assigned to reproduce an example of ancient Chinese architecture using either two-dimensional pictures or a three-dimensional scale model. Children in the 3-4 age group produced significantly better constructions in the pictures condition. This picture-superiority effect disappeared in the 4-5 age group. In the 5-6 age group, there was better dimensionality in children's constructions when they used a scale model as the referent. The data identified the age of 4-5 as a critical period for the development of children's symbolic representation to transfer relational information from a scale model to their construction.

There is perhaps no perfect time for community colleges to build new facilities as the pandemic and other factors impact student enrollment. Fall 2020 admission at community colleges dropped 10% from a year earlier, according to National Student Clearinghouse data from December 2020, far outweighing the 1% decline in undergraduates at public and private nonprofit four-year institutions. However, two-year colleges won't let perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to campus improvement. Even as more students access hybrid learning, community colleges are getting creative with funding and partnerships to build anew or renovate current facilities.

Trade-off decisions, which necessitate striking a balance between two or more desirable but competing features, are a crucial part of design practice. However, they are known to be difficult for student designers to make. While designers, educators, and researchers have numerous methods to assess the quality of design artifacts, these methods are not necessarily easy to use, nor do they indicate design competency. Moreover, they are not grounded in a definition of engineering design. The objectives of this study were twofold. First, we developed a protocol to depict design artifact quality through the lens of design trade-off decisions. We aimed to produce a protocol that: (1) encompasses multiple complementary and competing dimensions, (2) can be applied consistently and systematically, and (3) indicates design competency. We conceptualized a quantitative representation of the degree to which a design artifact addresses human, technical, and economic requirements called the "Trade-off Value Protocol." Second, we tested the "Trade-off Value Protocol" by applying it to 398 middle school students' design artifacts of energy-efficient homes. We used an etic approach of thematic analysis to identify the patterns of variation therein. We found "five distinct patterns of variation" in the set of student design artifacts, which suggested certain trends in the way that students address design dimensions and demonstrate varying levels of design competency. The "Trade-off Value Protocol" isolates an important feature of design competency with which beginning designers often struggle and could be a tool for educators to help students become more informed designers.

This study examined whether families' conversational reflections after a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)-related experience in a museum promoted learning transfer. 63 children (M = 6.93 years; 30 girls; 57% White, 17.5% Latinx, 8% Asian, 5% African American, 9.5% mixed, 3% missing race/ethnicity) and their parents received an engineering demonstration, engaged in a building activity, and either recorded a photo-narrative reflection about their building experience or not at the museum. Thirty-six of these families completed a building activity with different materials weeks later at home, and the majority (77%) evidenced learning transfer of the building principle demonstrated at the museum. Those who participated in the photo-narrative reflection at the museum also showed learning transfer by talking more about STEM during the home building activity.

As multivalent concepts, projects and formations such as China's Belt and Road Initiative continue to cleave through new spaces, it is increasingly important to attend to the construction, framing, maintenance and dissemination of the sign systems that enable them. Whether or not these systems constitute forms of cultural imperialism, move across '-scapes,' create 'frictions,' or expand geo-political power; the discourses that globally extended actors mobilize will increasingly play the pivotal and contentious role of mapping and stabilizing meaning. This article explores this problematic by considering one actor, the Belt and Road Studies Network (BRSN); one space, its website, brsn.net; and the sign system these construct. The language and technological affordances of brsn.net are analyzed with respect to a selection of salient contextual aspects: the monumental revival of a new 'Silk Road', the propaganda work of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the United Front Work Department (UFWD), and the expansion of think tanks in response to the continuous uncertainties of geo-political ecologies.

The objective of this study was to examine in what ways and to what extent preschoolers (5-6 years of age) manifest early Engineering Habits of Mind (EHoM) while engaging in an open-ended problem-solving construction task. The study comprised 228 children (120 boys and 108 girls). The study implemented a quantitative approach. The main research tool was an open-ended LEGO problem-solving play-like construction task (bridge building). All participants and their problem-solving processes were video-recorded. Micro-analysis of videos was conducted using a detailed coding scheme. The results of this study revealed evidence of all six EHoM during participants' execution of the open-ended Bridge Task. Most EHoM were performed by participants to a medium-low extent, based on the coding scheme. Significant positive correlations were found among five EHoM measures: "systems thinking," "problem-finding," "creative problem-solving," "visualizing," and "improving." The children's scores on the "adapting" measure did not correlate with any of the other EHoM measures. Significant correlations were found between four of the EHoM and the three measures of the quality of the construction product ("length," "height," "stability") and the "time-on-task." To conclude, young children demonstrate nascent EHoM with great enthusiasm. They invent, design, construct, and evaluate like young engineers.

Ranking systems are readily available and offer a simplistic way to differentiate among universities. However, end-users are not informed about the criteria and methods used to develop the ranking systems. Whereas ranking systems are used by prospective students, their lack of reliability and transparency outweigh their benefits. There are a few reliable ranking systems of institutions and some disciplines, but there is no reliable ranking system for construction higher education programs. This study proposes a rating, instead of a ranking system, to better illustrate the comparative excellence of a program, rather than simply providing an ordinal scale. This study focused on creating the framework for rating construction programs through the lens of faculty and administrators. Specifically, the study sought to identify appropriate criteria for rating construction programs and to find consensus among administrators concerning the criteria. An initial list of 200 criteria were gathered from three sources before applying parameters of: measurability, triangulation, and saturation that consolidated it to 21. Then, a modified Delphi method was used to objectively create a consensus for 11 criteria that should serve as a framework for rating the excellence of construction programs.

This article presents the results of a case involving the application of project-based learning carried out with students in the Mechanical Engineering degree program at the University of Girona. The project, entitled "Design and construction of a wooden bridge", was conducted at the Polytechnic School in the third-year Structures course. This project required students to address, consider and solve different problems related to the resistance of materials, structural calculations, material optimization and structural design. The project also included the building of the bridge based on the calculations made, thus enabling the students to verify the suitability of the theoretical calculations as compared to real results. Furthermore, a competition was held to reward those teams who obtained the best ratio between the failure load and the weight of the bridge. The main conclusion observed from the implementation of only two editions of this project is the acquisition of the different proposed competences (both specific and cross-curricular) by the students. Finally, it was interesting to note that after completing the activity, the students were observed to be more motivated by the course content.

Lack of commonly used vocabulary for informal learning environments hinders precise communication concerning what is observed, assessed, and understood about the relationship between space and learning. This study empirically extends taxonomies of terms and phrases that describe such relationships through content analysis of descriptions of completed library projects, concluding that focus and collaboration are the most prevalent terms. It also highlights how space affords learning. Study results will help practitioners and researchers to specify designs for improving library spaces, advocate for the value the library environment offers educational experiences, evaluate return on investment in renovation and construction, and contribute research toward understanding the relationships between learning and space.

This research analyzes the illegal and unreasonable practice of court rulings that aim to accelerate the major construction of problematic long-delayed apartment blocks in the Russian Federation. The authors express their critical attitude to the widespread wrongful approach that violates the laws in effect and allows courts to apply branch-specific legal regulation to public relations, which should be regulated by different laws. The authors support the supremacy of law over the administrative and economic expedience, which often prevails in modern Russia, and analyze the legal status of the victims of unscrupulous real estate developers, including that of persons who took mortgage loans and bore additional costs due to increased interest rates, and the financial losses of banks that were forced to create additional reserves for potential losses from bad debts with security in the form of apartments in buildings, the construction of which was delayed indefinitely.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the role of language in multilingual blue-collar workplaces by investigating how communication is realized in construction sites in Qatar. The State of Qatar offers a unique and, hence, very interesting setting for the linguistic investigation of migration-related issues, such as multilingualism (Pietikäinen et al. in Sociolinguistics from the periphery: small languages in new circumstances, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016), due to the fact that over 90% of its population consists of non-citizens (Ahmad, in: Kamrava, Babar (eds) Migrant labor in the Persian Gulf, Hurst & Company, London, pp 21-40, 2015). In addition, after its successful bid to host the World Cup 2022, the country is currently witnessing a rapid transformation of its landscape evident through its massive number of construction sites, where people of different national, ethnic and social class backgrounds from all over the world are hired to work together in developing the infrastructure that is part of the ambitious Qatar Vision 2030. Against this backdrop, the focus is on the sociolinguistic resources (Blommaert in The sociolinguistics of globalization, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010) mobilized in a construction site at a university in Qatar. The multilingual community of practice (Lave and Wenger in Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1991) investigated consists of blue-collar workers from India and their communication practices with their supervisors, who are project site engineers from all over the world. In such transnational fields, where effective communication is a sine qua non not only for the successful completion of the project or infrastructure itself but also, and perhaps most importantly, for the safety of everybody involved in the construction, multilingualism is the norm. It is argued that communication is realized through spatial repertoires (Canagarajah, in: Canagarajah (ed) The Routledge handbook of migration and language, Routledge, New York, pp 1--28, 2017), that are constructed and used as ingroup markers to facilitate communication among people from different nationalities, ethnicities and social classes. The ethnographic data, collected for almost 13 months, comprise voice-recorded interactions, field notes from on-site participant observation as well as ethnographic interviews with select blue-collar workers and their supervisors. The linguistic and exolinguistic analysis is contextualized in the broader socio-political and economic forces of Qatar (Fromherz in Qatar. A modern history, Georgetown University Press, Washington, 2012; Kamrava in Qatar: small state, big politics, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2015; chapters in Kamrava and Babar in Migrant labor in the Persian Gulf, Hurst & Company, London, 2015).

Given that interest is associated with learning in educational research, understanding how its development can be supported in different learning contexts represents an important line of inquiry. In this study, we investigate the influence of the slowmation construction process on middle school students' interest in learning science and geology. Both quantitative and qualitative data were generated from four classes of ninth-grade students; two classes participated in the construction of a slowmation about tectonic plate boundaries (n = 52) and two classes experienced a state-mandated programme of instruction (n = 43). The students completed the "Student Interest in Learning Science Survey," a Likert-style instrument, which examined their level of situational and individual interest prior to their participation in the study and upon their completion of the construction task or mandated instruction. Statistical analyses of these data revealed that the students who constructed a slowmation demonstrated significant increases in their interest in learning science and geology, while the students who experienced regular classroom instruction demonstrated lower levels of interest by the end of the study. Interview data obtained from students who constructed a slowmation suggest that the construction process afforded opportunities to work and learn in active, hands-on and collaborative ways; to exercise creativity; and to engage with technology. Importantly, increases in students' interest appeared to emerge from the early attentional and affective stages of their interest development, rather than through a meaningful connection to the geological subject matter, which has theoretical implications for interest research in learning contexts.

Supporting students' active participation in maker-centered project-based learning (PBL) can be challenging in inclusive classes. The aim of this study was to support students' active participation in cooperative team via teacher-directed reflective discussions during an inclusive, maker-centered PBL unit. The study was conducted during the students' final year of primary school. In the context of 44 students' inclusive class, the study focused on a team of 11 students (4 girls, 7 boys; aged 12 - 13 years) who worked in pairs and had their own differentiated responsibility areas (e.g. interior designers had interior design and lighting responsibilities) in the construction of a scale-model house. Because students in PBL need support in their learning, reflective discussions were organized after each lesson to ensure students' participation. Reflective discussions were video recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using a content and co-occurrence network analysis. The analysis revealed that teacher-directed reflective discussions first focused on supporting the cooperation of all students and then ensured the continuity of the process with most of the pairs. Some pairs, consisting of students with learning difficulties, needed intensified support until they could actively participate. The results indicate that teacher-directed reflective discussions improve students' cooperation skills and promote participation. A carefully prepared group composition enables the teacher to give intensified support to those students who need it most. In light of the results, we recommend that teachers focus on group composition when preparing inclusive, maker-centered PBL projects and use reflective discussions during said projects to promote inclusion and support students' active participation.

Design is often accepted as a fundamental aspect of engineering (Dym, et al., 2005). The design process is frequently portrayed as a set of steps. However, the design process is more complex than just a set of steps in a relatively fixed process. The complex nature of design, design thinking, questioning, and decision making is exactly what technology and engineering classrooms are well suited to address. When addressing the question--"Why is technology and engineering education (T&EE) so important?"--the authors believe T&EE's importance relates to our discipline's ability to solve complex problems by balancing theory and practice in engaging hands-on learning scenarios like designing, fabricating, and testing a concrete beam. In the previous article (see EJ1234886), students were exposed to beams with relatively uniform single polygon rectangular cross-sectional areas in the moment-of-inertia lab. In the case of an I-beam, both the flanges and web have individual moment-of-inertia quantities. These individual inertia quantities combine to determine the I-beam's moment of inertia about a specified axis (commonly the neutral axis, INA). The focus of this second article of two is another moment-of-inertia lab and a final concrete-beam design challenge. The lab further develops students' understanding of additional engineering principles involved in beam design. This article starts by providing background information on the moment of an area with respect to an axis. Then it transitions into the lab activity for the purpose of students determining how the moment-of-inertia quantity is affected by the distribution of area relative to the centroidal axis.

Many educators are now being tasked to incorporate STEAM education to facilitate meaningful learning and engage students in critical thinking. STEAM education may be enhanced through integration of other school subjects such as physical education. The purpose of this article is to describe a STEAM educational approach to foster the creation of an obstacle course design challenge for elementary school-aged children. Physical educators should take advantage of the enthusiastic interest in obstacle course racing, and the national focus on STEM and STEAM education, to foster an interdisciplinary approach to children's overall development.

After the end of the civil war in 1990, a major reconstruction effort was underway in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. With reconstruction came significant changes to the city's landscape and identity. Adopting a linguistic landscape (LL) lens, this study aims at better understanding these changes by asking what languages are used on the store fronts of three Beiruti streets, and how the three linguistic landscapes are the same or different considering that two of the streets (Weygand and Foch) are part of the reconstructed Downtown area of Beirut and one (Émile Eddé) is situated outside that area. Analysing 128 private store fronts revealed a multilingual and diverse Beiruti linguistic landscape with differences that suggested a divide between reconstructed and non-reconstructed areas of the city. This study contributes to the literature on linguistic landscapes by examining a new multilingual context and presenting a case where local perceptions of various languages present in Beirut combine with transnational influences in shaping the LL of a city and framing its identity. More specifically, this study reveals how the absence (rather than the presence) of certain scripts such as Armenian and Arabic in Beiruti streets is indexical of the city's changing identity and how the use of iconic and international brand names has contributed to transforming the old Beirut to a cosmopolitan city that is part of the globalized economy.

In this study children's learning of the concept, stability, during some building activities were investigated. It was also examined how a story can create meaning, having the children build for some animals in the story. Two preschool teachers and 10 children participated. Data consisted of video-recordings from activities with the children and was analysed through thematic coding. The findings showed that the children enjoyed to build and showed an understanding of how to build stable constructions, however without using the word stable. There were connections to the story and new stories were also made by the children during building activities.

The focus of this article is to serve as an introduction to engineering principles in beam design using a lab activity. The concepts and skills learned in this article will lead students into concrete beam and form design and fabrication as well as the ability to precisely predict the amount of weight a concrete beam will hold during testing. An integral process of producing a concrete beam with a precisely predicted load causing failure is the emphasis of this and a subsequent article through a technical, hands-on activity involving the application of math, science, and engineering principles in the design, fabrication, and testing.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the Strategic Research Consortium Centre for Technological Innovation in Building and Civil Engineering (A-CITEEC) and its scientific strategy for the promotion of research and higher education in building and civil engineering. Design/methodology/approach: By means of an approach based on the comparison of strategic actions with other research consortia, a scientific programme is designed following innovative research areas. Findings: The A-CITEEC is a supra-group structure that strengthens scientific research and provides new opportunities for innovation and technology transfer at the national and international level. Research limitations/implications: The main objective of the A-CITEEC is to improve and intensify research and knowledge transfer in the fields of engineering and sustainable construction. As a direct consequence, this consortium of research groups is promoting community well-being, economic development and optimization of ecosystem services. Practical implications: The A-CITEEC enhances collaborations in the national and international university community to achieve their objectives. Other remarkable activities encouraged by the consortium are the organization of scientific events, such as visits to the research centre, the promotion of the research transfer to companies and encouraging the presence of women researchers. Social implications: The achievement of the objectives and research lines by the A-CITEEC members will lead to satisfying the sustainable development goals (SDGs), priorities of the RIS3 Strategy, Spanish Strategy for Science and Technology and Innovation 2013-2020 and with the European Strategy H2020. Originality/value: The scientific activities shown in this case study are intended to ensure the continuity of the group consortium, which is unique at the regional level in the field of building and civil engineering.

This article explores gendered processes in preschool science through Barad's agential realism [2007. "Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics of the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning." London: Duke Universal Press], and as such, the study makes both theoretical and empirical contributions in how it combines perspectives from emergent science [Siraj-Blatchford, J. 2001. Emergent Science and Technology in the Early Years." Paper presented at the XXIII World Congress of OMEP. Santiago, Chile, August 3], new materialism, and gender theory. Empirically, the study makes use of data constructed during a field study in a Swedish preschool with five-year-old children. The focus of the field study was the children's play and explorations together with the preschool environment, during activities not specifically guided by teachers. The analysis highlights how the children's identities and scientific explorations are made possible as well as constrained together with the preschool's material-discursive environment. As such, the study demonstrates how teachers cannot rely on any environment, activity, choice or subject content to be (gender) neutral.

This article describes an after-school program at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf (HMS), the oldest public day school for deaf students in the United States, where almost half of the student body imagined and created bridge and robotic machines. The Deaf Robotics Engineering and Math Team, or the DREAM Team club, included HMS students in grades three through five and grades six through eight. Using an engineering curriculum guide the student's goal was to compete in the Boston Public Schools Robotic Olympics. Both challenges required students to follow and create diagrams and engage in the engineering design process. At the same time, as they worked together they developed skills in the five C's: (1) communication, (2) collaboration, (3) critical thinking, (4) cooperation, and (5) creative problem solving. In order to measure the impact of the after-school engineering experiences, elementary students were tested before and after they participated in the program and testing revealed that the students improved their attitudes about engineering and understanding of what it meant to be an engineer.

This paper documents and assesses the development of a construction safety training module featuring interactive, BIM-enabled, 3D visualizations to test if such a tool can enhance safety training related to scaffolds. This research documents the technical challenges and the lessons learned through the development and administration of a prototype training module in a required undergraduate construction safety course at Colorado State University. Student feedback was strongly positive, and findings suggest that such an innovative teaching method may be more effective than traditional teaching methods based on pre and post knowledge-testing. Such research highlights future opportunities to develop more extensive and advanced training modules using interactive, BIM-enabled, 3D visualization techniques in support of safety training within construction education.

In this paper I describe how students use a project management simulation game based on an attack-defense mechanism where two teams of players compete by challenging each other's projects. The project management simulation game is intended to be played by pre-service construction workers and engineers. The gameplay has two parts: a planning part, where the player make managerial decisions about his construction site, and a challenge part where the player chooses between typical problems to occur on the opponent's construction site. Playing the game involves analyzing both your own and you opponent's building project for weak spots. The intention of the project management simulation game, is to provide students with an increased sensitivity towards the relation between planning and reality in complex construction projects. The project management simulation game can be interpreted both as a competitive game and as a simulation. Both of these views are meaningful and can be seen as supporting learning. Emphasizing the simulation aspect let us explain how students learn by being immersed into a simulated world, where the players identify with specific roles, live out specific situations, and experiment with relevant parameters. Emphasizing the competition game aspect we can see how play and competition allow players to experience intrinsic motivation and engagement, as well as thinking strategically about their choices, and hence put attention towards all the things that can go wrong in construction work. The goal of the paper is to investigate empirically how these two understandings influence game experience and learning outcome. This question is approached by qualitative post-game interviews about the experienced fun, competition and realism. Specific attention is given to how the understandings of the experience (for instance as a game and as a simulation) is entangled when the students describe their experience. Using the concepts frame and domain it is analyzed how the students conceptualize and make meaning of the particular educational scenario manifested by the project management simulation game. We take as an outset that students interpret the situations in the project management simulation game as relating to one or several domains, especially the domains competition and simulation. Results suggest that the views of the scenario as a competition and as a simulation do coexist, and that these views merge in a subtle way. The players consider the game to be both a realistic simulation of construction site work and a fun competition in which they try to beat their opponents and these two views do not seem to create cognitive conflicts. In the discussion it is explored how aspects of the design affords this double conceptualization (e.g. the "manage mode" and "challenge mode"), and finally it is discussed how we can explain why the players experience the challenges that they pose on each other as a natural part of the gameplay, but not as a realistic aspect of the game as a simulation.

The investigation aims in this study were to uncover the observations of infrastructures and physics laboratory in vocational high school for Stone and Concrete Construction Techniques Expertise Field or Teknik Konstruksi Batu dan Beton (TKBB)'s in Purwokerto Central Java Province, mapping the Vocational High School or Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan (SMK) in the expertise field of TKBB that was there in Central Java Province, viewing the physics teacher's profiles of vocational high school, and the implementation of physics laboratory in vocational high school for TKBB's expertise field. This study was focused on the Vocational High School (SMK) in expertise field of TKBB, by involving about 26 physics' teachers (N = 26) from 13 SMK from seven districts in the Central Java Province, Indonesia, which is consisted by 6 private and 7 public SMK. The study were conducted by observations and semi-open written interview. The results are showed that 46.16% of physics' teachers in vocational high school were not implementing the practicum in the physics learning and 53.84% of teachers stated they were implementing the physics practicum. The reason of the teachers to did not implement the practicum were: 1. the lack of practicum equipment availability, 2. the lack of school hours, 3. the lack of ability of the teachers to design the practicum. From 14 teachers of 26 teachers who were involved in the study are stated that they were implementing the physics practicum in one semester, it is obtained the results if there were a variation of the number of practicum implementation, namely: 1 times, 2 times, 3 times and = 4 times, by the percentage of each about: 7,14 %, 7.14%, 71.42% and 14.28%.

If you want to get the attention of a group of eighth grade math students, tell them they are going to build a life-size cardboard boat. To increase interest, follow up this statement by telling them that two to four of them will actually be rowing this boat across a small pond. Eighth grade math students at Oasis Charter Middle School in southwest Florida have completed this project for the past four years. What has now become a source of great student pride at the school began as a challenge by the eighth grade teachers to their students. The teachers sought to develop a capstone project, which brought together the key mathematical issues students should learn in their middle grades math classes (i.e., scale, volume, Pythagorean theorem). They also desired a project to engage students in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) disciplines to help young adolescents develop skills necessary to thrive in a 21st century workforce. As a result, the cardboard boat challenge was created and implemented. In this article, an overview of STEM education is shared, along with a discussion of the struggles and triumphs of the eighth grade students as they planned and built their cardboard boats.

Technology volition is the will to develop knowledge of, and use, the physical world to design products, processes and systems. The aim of this study was to contribute new knowledge of children's technology volition when they identify, build and improve technical constructions, and how teachers support this learning. Analysis focused on moments when children's volition was expressed in a construction activity. In total, eleven preschool teachers and 49 children, aged 4-5 years, from three preschools, participated. Data consists of video-recordings from four activities, two each in preschool A and B, showing children's expressed technological volition, as well as field notes about the teachers' preparations. Results show how differences among children's expressed volition is connected to their imagination of how materials can be combined to construct 'houses' and 'vehicles' from everyday objects. Building a house resulted in a focus on how to make the building solid and water resistant, and inspired children to learn about materials for different purposes in houses such as the floor, walls and an angled roof. Building a vehicle encouraged children to talk about speed, movements and fuel. Results show how children indicate and express their discernment of how materials are combined to create constructions, and how they discover ways in which materials change during the building process. For some of the children it was difficult to see the potential of a material other than its original use, while others used their imagination to find opportunities to use materials to make new objects.

Construction Education has been dwindling in K-12 classrooms for the past 20 years (Frazier, 2015; Chini, 1999; Jones, 1990). This has led to enrollment issues and professional shortages in the construction industry (Bigelow, 2015). Couple these facts with the call for STEM majors (Painter, 2012), and there is a noteworthy opportunity: combine construction and STEM education to promote interest and stability in STEM and construction. In an effort to address this opportunity, an experiential learning curriculum solution was designed. Not only does this solution present a hybrid approach that blends construction and STEM, but it also addresses many of the issues that have caused construction education to be removed from many K-12 schools (e.g., cost, space, and school focus on standardized testing). The solution involves teaching construction and design principles using universally available (and well-known) and affordable design software. The solution makes blending STEM and construction affordable and interesting by using an experiential, student-centered learning pedagogy. Also ensuring that the curriculum integrates core STEM principles has additional beneficial learning outcomes: (1) Students are more aware of the application and connection of STEM principles to industry applications and careers. For example, construction is closely related to STEM education in that it implements engineering and design and puts them into application. It is also a field where problem solving, creativity, and critical thinking are needed every day; and (2) Students experience problem solving in a creative--but context-rich--application, which can have a positive influence on academic performance (Bransford, 1986; McMillan, 1987). This articles describes an experiential, student-centered, STEM-infused construction unit which was co-designed by a construction professor and a technology and engineering education professor. The learning objective of the unit was to increase student interest in construction and complementary STEM areas by engaging students in a hands-on activity, using digital technologies familiar to them.

This study investigates a proposal to relocate a secondary school in Taiwan because of political and urbanization forces. This important issue has received little attention in the educational literature. Interviews, a focus group, and surveys were used to collect the views of parents, students, teachers, administrators, and local influential people. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis was adopted to evaluate the possibility of school relocation. The results showed that teachers were less likely to agree to relocate, whereas policymakers supported the move. The principal, many students, and their parents would agree to relocate if the new site offered a high-quality learning environment.

In this article, we report on sixth-grade students' responses to a set of problem activities that required the application of mathematics, science, and engineering knowledge in designing and constructing a paper bridge that could withstand an optimal load. Increasing students' application and awareness of their disciplinary learning and how they are applying this in an integrated STEM activity remains a challenge for educators. In addressing this issue, we included a focus on knowledge reflection and knowledge scaffolding through thought-provoking student workbooks. Among the findings are students' capabilities in planning, designing, reflecting, constructing, and redesigning. Students' planning indicated that they could justify their proposed bridge type/s, which often included a combination of types, by referring to their STEM understandings. At the same time, students remained cognizant of the problem boundaries. Students' design sketches indicated an awareness of the problem constraints, an understanding of basic engineering principles, and an application of mathematics and science knowledge. Students' reflections on their actions helped them to improve their bridge constructions. Suggestions are presented for knowledge scaffolding to facilitate the flexible and innovative application of STEM learning to new problem situations.

Historically, tactful and calculated development efforts have been attempted through various avenues in American higher education institutions. Higher education institutions have been creative in their attempts to ensure financial solvency. However, the common fallback of tuition increases have proved insufficient to meet most institutions' spending needs. This is magnified during economically challenging times. Cheslock and Gianneschi (2008) explain that "when tuition dollars cannot be increased further, higher education institutions will become especially reliant upon alternative sources of revenue. Private giving is one of the more promising possibilities" (210). This archival essay will highlight the case of how one institution, Baylor University, implemented such a strategy to maintain campus advancement during World War II.

This study investigates the impact of residence hall architecture on students' academic achievement, also considering the influence of race and homophily opportunity--a tendency to create social bonds with like others. We found that socializing architecture was positively associated with a higher first-semester grade point average, and that homophily opportunity had a significant effect for Black students, but only when those students live in residence halls designed with socializing architecture.

To date, research conducted on interactive learning spaces (ILSs) has focused on the student learning experience, with limited focus on faculty perceptions. In this study, construction management faculty were surveyed about the availability of interactive learning spaces, the impact of teaching in a space designed for active learning, and the challenges associated with an active learning classroom. The survey was distributed to approximately 960 faculty members at 170 universities with 4-year construction management programs in North America and Europe. Approximately 65 faculty members responded from 55 universities. While a significant number of programs have access to at least one ILS and the general consensus is positive for these types of spaces, programs with fewer students continue to rely heavily on traditional classrooms. For those programs with active learning classrooms (a type of ILS), responses indicate that room design, technology, pairing classes with the appropriate classroom, and lack of training are challenges to full active learning implementation. While this study explored education within the construction management sector of the built environment, the authors suggest that the findings could be extrapolated and further explored within other Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) disciplines.

Defining what it means to be in the "bosom of nature," to use Montessori's words, Laurie Ewert-Krocker points out that the adolescent period of storm and stress is quelled by the natural world. But most important, when socialization is the essential developmental focus of the young adolescent, positive social organization is fostered by nature. The dialogue between nature and the human-built world is a conversation well worth having, leading to a profound understanding of what it means to use both the imagination and sensorial understanding to contribute to the world's safekeeping. [This article was reprinted from "The NAMTA Journal" 31,2 (2006, Spring): 183-194. This talk was presented at the NAMTA conference titled "Science, History, and the Arts Through Nature's Keyhole," Atlanta, GA, January 26-29, 2006.]

This study presents an investigation about the use of multimedia procedures applied to architectural construction teaching. We have applied current technological resources, aiming to rationalize and optimize the active learning process. The experience presented to students is very simple and yet very effective. It has consisted in a simulation of an actual building situation, so that they may participate more actively in their learning experience. Conclusions are extremely positive because students surprisingly involve themselves, and they are able to visualize and understand much better the reality of the construction, which increases their motivation and consequently reinforces their learning.

A small, handmade and inexpensive robot can help students across a range of ages unpack and explore big questions around the nature of life, curiosity and creativity. Via a series of workshops students learn how to frame and investigate different types of questions including big questions that bridge science, computing and the wider humanities.

To attract and retain students, universities are confronted with increased demand to provide housing options that meet the new expectations of the millennial generation. Recent trends and housing preferences are examined. The results of surveys detailing some of these new demands and how universities are attempting to address these demands are discussed. Additionally, universities are under pressure to efficiently use their limited resources and, as government support for higher education declines, public universities are seeking other sources of funding for major projects. Suggestions are made for unique partnering and financing options.

This paper not only aims to present the feedback received from the students, but also evaluate the feedback by reviewing the teaching practice. It analyses the teacher should be aware of the importance that feedback, both to and from the students, has upon the teaching and learning process. Through a case study about the feedback from the students in Construction Engineering Technology of YAU, the author gives some suggestions on the teaching that the teacher's reflective evaluation can refine the teaching and help them to be better teachers. The teacher may incorporate feedback into practice, which teachers, like students, can benefits from assessment and evaluation of their own work or practice.