The Departments of Building and Real Estate held their biannual Teaching Development Seminar on 24 January 2007. The speaker was Associate Professor Mohan Kumaraswamy, from the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, University of Hong Kong. He was a Visiting Academic at the NUS Department of Building, on the Universitas 21 Fellowship programme.

The topic of Dr Kumaraswamy's talk was "Accelerating Knowledge Acquisition and Application". It is well known that students are usually required to understand and be able to apply a large body of knowledge within a short time frame. Hence, it would be ideal to accelerate their learning processes in general. Apart from the theoretical understanding required, students also need to acquire knowledge about how tasks are to be performed, despite a lack of hands-on experience in doing the task. Drawing on his experience of teaching on building and civil engineering programmes, he shared how he uses web-based visualisation tools to accelerate student learning and knowledge acquisition. He also demonstrated how students could use the various features of the tool to conduct 'virtual site visits'. Such site visits enabled students to 'zoom in' on various stages and components, if and when they want to know more about a specific aspect, not unlike a real site visit. This way, students could better understand the intricacies of concepts and procedures in building and civil engineering. This assists students to acquire knowledge which is usually acquired from hands-on experience.

In addition, Dr Kumaraswamy also shared a complementary approach of using problem-based learning as a mechanism for students to work with industry partners to get a better understanding of their learning. Problem-based learning also allowed opportunities for students to better understand the constraints faced by different professions operating in the construction industry.

An interesting and lively Question-and-Answer session followed his presentation, during which some of the limitations of the above teaching methods/tools were discussed.

Figure 1. Professor Mohan Kumaraswarmy

Figure 2. The Departments of Building and Real Estate’s teaching
development seminar with Professor Mohan Kumaraswarmy