Building Code Educational Modules for Professional Exposure in AE Curriculums

Traditional lecturing of building code related topics are commonly taught ad-hoc in other courses, often get misinterpreted by faculty unfamiliar with code details, or left out entirely from courses taught by faculty who are "purely academic" in their experience who do not fully understand the value of teaching code concepts to students. More often than not, instructors who include codes take a hands-off approach to teaching that transmits information passively with little appeal that minimize student engagement and immersion where students never grasp or quickly comprehend their importance. To improve dissemination of code knowledge in the Architectural Engineering (AE) Dept. at Penn State, a project was undertaken enhance the current curriculum's building code instruction. Self-contained teaching modules were developed that can be incorporated within existing courses. This paper looks into the critical needs, opportunities, and methods to convey code information in a meaningful way rather than the idealized representations. The basis of how the modules were structured, including their assessment materials is included in the discussion along with initial testing of the success of these methods.