Ensuring Quality Articulation For Enhancement Of Construction Workforce Education

It is common knowledge that the construction industry is experiencing a serious workforce shortage at all levels of the workforce that will only get worse in the future unless something is done about it and done soon. The issue is receiving broad discussion at diverse levels and different solutions are being suggested. In most cases, however, the measures being foreseen to overcome the workforce shortage concentrate on the shortage of the "trades" in construction industry rather than the total workforce. This is to be expected considering the specific mission of the construction labor force organizations deeply involved in the issue of workforce shortage. The authors believe that the issue should be looked at all levels of the workforce and this paper, in particular, will deal with the issue of training of the construction workforce for technical and managerial positions. One of the promising approaches under implementation is that of articulations between the academic institutions and the vocational institution so that qualified students from the vocational programs can continue their education in academic institutions for filling technical and management positions in the construction industry. One problem with these articulation arrangements has been that of ensuring relevant laboratory knowledge on the part of the vocational education students in certain specific areas. Even though vocational programs are inherently hands-on, the labs in such institutions have limited capabilities in terms of soils testing, materials testing, asphalt testing, to name a few areas. This paper focuses on an approach for addressing this shortcoming of vocational education students not having access to some of the labs that academic institutions do by means of employing a construction lab-cam and broadcasting a lab session in asynchronous or synchronous modes to other institutions so that they have live or delayed access to relevant lab sessions. As a result students coming to academic institutions to further their knowledge will have the adequate background in lab work that relates to their fields. The paper elaborates on the technology employed in this undertaking and what are the advantages and the possible extensions of use of this technology and what this means for ensuring a high quality workforce in construction and related industries. This approach brings a solution to the lack of appropriate labs in some good vocational programs of possible articulation quality. Problem statement P ge 659.1 Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright 2001, American Society for Engineering Education As a university department we have access to the technology, training facilities and the construction experienced faculty to share our knowledge and testing labs with the Vocational Community, (be it K-12 or 2 year Technical Colleges.) Faculty at vocational institutions do not have the funding for the well equipped testing labs as we do, and are thus at the disadvantage of teaching only the lecture aspects of certain kinds of classes without the benefit of the experiments to reinforce the technical concepts. This project is intended to address this shortcoming. This is especially important in teaching Civil Engineering Technology because so many of the structural properties and concepts these students must learn are best understood through experiments and because these kinds of testing machines will be used in many of the jobs these students will eventually be doing. Current Articulation Situation Our degree program in Civil Engineering Technology and Construction Technology at IUPUI require four lab-based classes for a total of 12 credit hours ( CET 104Fundamentals of Surveying; CET 231-Soils Testing; CET 267-Materials Testing and CET 312-Construction Surveying). In the present current articulation agreements with Vincennes University and Ivy Tech State College, it is not possible to articulate some courses due to this lacking lab component even though there are courses whose text/lecture part is similar to what we have. Both Vincennes and Ivy Tech State College could offer similar classes to ours if supplemented and coordinated with our labs through live-interactive use of a Lab Cam and lab technicians. These courses could then be upgraded to match the learning objectives of our classes and thus would be directly transferable toward our degrees, instead of the current situation where additional lab classes they must be taken to meet our 4 year requirements. Sharing our lab resources would enlarge the pool of highly trained educated people in the Construction industry and increase the number of 4-year degree holders, by shortening the time between the 2 year and 4 year degrees since more courses in the 2-year program could replace more of those in the 4-year program. Also more of the workforce that is geographically remote from IUPUI will have exposure to our 4-year school that would increase the likelihood of them continuing their education here.