This project addresses advancing cyberinfrastructure education in the engineering and construction workforce. The construction industry is one of the largest in the nation, with 7.9 million craft and professional workers and one trillion USD of work put in place annually. The industry also ranks among the lowest in terms of usage of novel cyberinfrastructure technologies, with a predominance of small- and medium sized enterprises and an increasingly minority workforce. In response, this project seeks a dramatic increase in workforce skills by offering both a novel technical infrastructure for pedagogy as well as sustainable partnerships that address education of the workforce, university students, and select grade 9-12 learners. Beyond a broad impact on workforce education, project success will enhance industry competitiveness and support for continued cyberinfrastructure research and development.
Specifically, this project seeks to demonstrate the utility of an integrated learning environment that promotes what the construction industry calls the intelligent job site (IJS), which can be considered a domain specific instance of visions for ubiquitous computing. IJS encompasses sensors, mobile computing, and wireless networking to provide both localized and project-wide decision support. This demonstration project creates a situated learning environment within a campus building that simulates an IJS on an active construction site via specific learning modules (two modules and a core infrastructure will be developed and tested as part of this project). Established partnerships with industry are leveraged for development and dissemination of learning modules to students and industry professionals. In addition, the project will collect input from potential partners who may implement education technologies on future sites. In the long-term, the project encourages sustainable transfer of cyberinfrastructure experience and knowledge from ongoing research to students at all levels, from workforce, to graduate students, to undergraduate students, and finally to 9-12 enrichment.
