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Session 3525

A Wood Engineering Design Course on Television

Juan J. Salinas, Don Westwood Civil and Environmental Engineering, Architecture/Carleton University, Canada

Abstract This paper discusses some aspects of the planning, production and delivery of a senior undergradu- ate engineering course offered by television. This course is normally taken for credit by senior undergradu- ates in civil and mechanical engineering and by architecture students. The TV version allows practicing engineers, architects and construction technologists to upgrade their knowledge in this field. Like in many engineering courses there are laboratory experiments and design assignments. Some innovative compo- nents of this effort are the collaborative approach to teaching (engineer + architect), the use of televised laboratory experiments (as opposed to live demonstration labs) and the use of information technologies for faculty-student interaction (fax, voice mail and electronic mail). The course is broadcast twice a week (three hours each time) for 12 weeks. Students in the region may watch the lectures at the broadcast time or they may record them for future viewing. Students living outside the broadcast area subscribe to a system that delivers the videotapes by regular mail every week. The course has been offered for three terms and has received favourable reviews by the students, several from many cities across Canada. Student feed-back indicates the need for a companion set of lecture notes. We are working on this and on a few other revisions necessary to update the technical material to comply with the 1995 version of the Canadian timber code.

Introduction In 1994 the Canadian Wood Council (CWC) issued a “Request for Proposals” for the development of a television-based course on Wood Engineering Design. Three universities responded and Carleton was assigned the project probably due to the fact that our Instructional TV department has many years of expe- rience in the production and delivery of TV courses of excellent quality. One of the authors, Don West- wood, has been doing TV courses since 1980 and at present is actively working in the production of a fifth TV course. The other author, Juan J. Salinas, developed and has been teaching a senior undergraduate course on Timber Engineering since 1978. Both authors enjoy teaching and have been recognized for their interests and achievements in education. The CWC contributed $ 40,000 (all costs in 1994 Canadian dol- lars) to this project. The university contributed an equal amount, in kind, through the offices and personnel of the Instructional TV and Media Services departments. The authors estimate their contribution, in kind, to be of the same order as the figures above, bringing the total cost to around $ 150 000. The result is a set of 36 lectures and 2 labs with a total of nearly 40 hours of instruction capable of being broadcast over a lo- cal cable TV channel visible within a 25 km radius, by satellite, or deliver the tapes by regular post any- where in Canada and the U.S. to any student officially registered in the course. Registration fees are in the order of $ 200 textbook and manuals cost approximately $ 100 and out-of-town students pay an extra fee of $ 85 to cover mailing costs of the video tapes as well as the proctoring and supervision required for off- campus exams.. The course is a “regular” elective offered by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carleton University as Engineering 82.422 V Wood Engineering. It usually attracts fourth

1996 ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings

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Salinas, J. J., & Westwood, D. (1996, June), A Wood Engineering Design Course On Television Paper presented at 1996 Annual Conference, Washington, District of Columbia. 10.18260/1-2--6404