DESIGN OF AN INNOVATIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCE FOR THE FINAL PROJECT OF THE BUILDING ENGINEERING DEGREE

This work presents the bases of a new teaching methodology for the Final Project of the Degree of Building Engineering. This methodology aims to approach students to advanced forms of work in architectural and engineering offices by employing Building Information Modeling (BIM) technologies. This initiative has been funded within the Call 2011 for Teaching Research Incentives of the Teaching Plan of the University of Seville. Following the guidelines of the European Higher Education Area, the learning experience designed has to enable the future Building Engineers the acquisition of the specific and generic competences ascribed to the Final Project in the Verification Report of the Degree of Building Engineering.

The specific competence “Presentation and defense before a university board of a final project, consisting of an integration exercise of the formative contents received and skills acquired through the degree” is trained by the development of a building execution project with the use of BIM technologies. For a decade, architecture and engineering offices have increasingly been incorporating in their projects new tools for treating information in digital integrated systems, i.e. programs which allow the construction of building virtual models in three dimensions and the identification of their constructive components, providing them with parametric dimensions. The operating capacity of BIM programs is stronger than that of 2D drawing programs since they can manage and generate all the technical documentation in an integrated way.

As far as the generic competences are concerned, the problem is that the Final Project has ascribed twenty four competences and their training and evaluation along a single term seem quite impossible. In order to solve this circumstance, the four most important generic competences of Building Engineers have been identified according to their professional profile: “G01. Capacity for organization and planning”, “G06. Information management skills”, “G09. Ability to work in an interdisciplinary team” and “G13. Positive social attitude towards social and technological innovations”. The use of BIM technologies and collaborative work methodologies allow the training of these generic competences.

Finally, assessment matrixes of the five competences involved have been established with the descriptors of the assessment criteria for each of their corresponding indicators at each level of student achievement. This study is limited to the design of the experience; its implementation could be carried out in the second term of the 2011-2012 academic year, if the main pre-requisite to be met by students, command of BIM programs such as ALLPLAN, REVIT or ARCHICAD, is achieved. Aware of this difficulty, due to the fact that BIM programs are taught in optional subjects, a curricular line for students interested in participating in this experience is also proposed for next academic year.