Joseph P. Cleary, MS and Gregory F. Starzyk, JD, CPC
California Polytechnic State University
San Luis Obispo, CA
In the wake of a 2014 wildfire that destroyed 150 homes in Weed, CA, Great Northern Services, a non-governmental organization, reached out to Cal Poly with a constructivist-learning opportunity. In response, students were recruited into an interdisciplinary studio where teams competed to design work-force housing for a new subdivision. The winning design advanced to the detailed planning stage. A separate trio of construction management students designed their senior projects around producing shop drawings, procuring materials, organizing equipment, prefabricating the winning design’s exterior walls and shipping them to the site. This case study documents the process and the lessons learned. In the end, two indicators of experiential learning, eight indicators of discovery learning, one indicator of problem-based learning, and one indicator of spiral learning were documented. Future research initiatives could quantify the efficacy of each constructivist variant; disaggregate these learning opportunities into smaller constructs with the potential to reach more students; and contemplate means of incorporating those potentials into either traditional classes or into integrated labs.
Key Words: Learn-by-Doing, Experiential Learning, Discovery-Learning, Problem-Based Learning, Spiral-Learning