Recent Thoughts on Continuing Education

My yesterday was spent trolling the halls of the state capitol with my architect peers as we promoted such notions as mandated continuing education, more quickly renewed building codes, student loan debt forgiveness, among other things.  I hadn't given our shtick much thought prior to the day or even during the day as we ushered into representatives offices with our pamphlets, relying heavily on my cohorts to execute the delivery (my brain has been very inaccessible lately, I think coming off 2 years of chronic insomnia has finally caught up with me).

However, now that I am on the verge of slumber, my mind has finally awoken (side note, why is it that I can go an entire day half asleep and then by the time 10:00pm rolls around I am suddenly wide awake?  This happens all too often.).  I am stuck on a thought a new coworker of mine has placed in my cranium earlier this afternoon.  He is licensed in two states other than mine own, both of which require their own versions of continuing education.  He mentioned how he earns his credits via free webinars online, etc. and he casually noted how many continuing education programs are merely a 15 minute powerpoint followed by 40 minutes of product promotion.  There is no way for the jurisdiction to oversee all the continuing education programs, so we rely on the provider's dedication and honesty in providing these credits sans proprietary influence.  Of the 10 or so credits I have observed in the past 6 months, I can think of maybe one that I would feel comfortable not flagging.  Most recently, I noted a "1-hour" continuing education presentation that lasted 15 minutes. "Looks like we have some time, mind if I tell you about our latest products?"

My point with this is I am wondering if passing a bill for continuing education in Pennsylvania is useful at all.  It seems like I would rather spend my time conducting my own research, as many architects must do in advancing their projects, than sitting through some product rep's spiel, which may not contain any useful or even accurate information!

Is there some other way we can enforce continuing education besides tabulating widely diverse credit hours?  My mind turns to the governing body that mandates the licensing process for us in the first place... NCARB.  Perhaps NCARB should be the sole provider of continuing education.  They already have a pretty good library of monographs with quizzes that qualify for continuing education credits.  I don't know how regularly they are updated, though.

I'll have to ponder this more at a later time.

Let's Review...

The CEU from Architectural Record.

I swear, every time I think I have this figured out, I realize there is another step to it.

Step One - Take Quiz
Read CEU article from Architectural Record and take the quiz online.

Step Two - Download Certificate

Submit your quiz results for scoring. Save Completion Certificate (preferably as an image file, as you will need to upload it as such later).

Step Three - Self-Report

Log into AIA website and find your way to the "Self-Reported Activities" page. Here you will add each article, and upload the corresponding Completion Certificate. Click "Add New" to begin.

Step Four - Download Transcript & Submit to NCARB

Once your Self-Reported Activity is approved, it will be added to your AIA transcript. Now you must download your AIA transcript, and log into NCARB's e-EVR. Click on "My Supplementary Education" to begin. Here you, again, add each article/course one by one, this time uploading your AIA transcript as an attachment. (I personally download the entire range of courses on my AIA transcript and upload that same single file for each article.) Now you wait for NCARB to approve.

What's odd is, I don't remember submitting my Certificate of Completion to AIA/Oklahoma for the April 2010 article, and yet the course completion appeared on my transcript. So weird. I have been waiting and waiting for AIA/OK to approve my other articles, until I reread some things about self-reported activities and realized this was the actual process for doing so.

So as far as I know, this process should work. I just completed Step Three for 11 articles that I had read throughout the year. Hopefully they will be approved in time before my AIA membership runs out! (unless, of course my employers opt to renew my membership for me)

THE Skyscraper

I just read Architectural Record's August issue's CEU, "Beyond Limits." It was a compelling article about the newest tallest skyscraper in the world, which by the way, is only about a HALF MILE TALL!! Pretty intense! Not to mention, it's in a desert. How crazy is that? Anyway, it an incredibly intriguing article, so I thought I'd plug it here. Also this graphic is helpful in recognizing this impressive feat.



Burj Khalifa
designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

P.S. I wanted to be the first post in the new month!

Charette: Sustainable Home

Thursday I attended the Eastern PA chapter of AIA's design charette for students (and architects) in the area. I served as a "sketchup facilitator," which meant my sole job was to create a sketchup model of whatever design my team of 15+ students and professionals came up with. I wasn't allowed to participate in the designing portion. I will offer that 15+ people in an hour and a half wouldn't have afforded me much opportunity to participate anyway! However, it was still interesting. My only qualm was the communication that seemed to lack between my group and I, for example literally 2 minutes before the models were "due," some of my team members came up to me and said that we needed some skylights on the roof... And of course they weren't just ordinary skylights, they had to be some funky shape. Needless to say, that did not make it into the model.

I will admit it was kind of fun to fiddle in sketchup, and as a bonus I received a Dunkin Donuts gift card as compensation for my services. As another bonus, I can hopefully count the experience as 4 hours towards community service for my IDP.

I have included some screenshots of the model below for your viewing pleasure. To give you a sense of the design challenge, the teams were to design a home for a group of 4 (college students, family members, roommates, etc.) incorporating various sustainable technologies. This challenge was inspired by the Decathlon. The site was an open lot on Hamilton Street in Allentown, PA. My team decided on a mixed-use facility where the family who lived upstairs owned and operated the bike shop/gym downstairs. Part of their design was the implementation of stationary bicycles rigged to generators to produce electricity... I swear I had nothing to do with this concept!






For the record, my team was a "close second." Out of 3 teams we received Gold (as you know, with LEED the ratings are silver, gold and platinum).

Receive IDP Credit for Architectural Record Articles

I believe I introduced this topic a few weeks ago, when I was officially accepted into the AIA as an associate member. For any article in Architectural Record that is accompanied by the AIA/Continuing Education logo, you can obtain IDP credit. Each article has an expiration date, though, so be sure to complete it before that date passes.

Luckily the AIA, McGraw Hill and IDP have their ducks in a row for this task, because once you complete the quiz online your just sit tight! McGraw Hill submits your score to the AIA who then approves the specified Learning Unit. This approval process, however, takes at least 30 days (again, this is 2010 and digital submissions take weeks to validate?). Once your quizzes are approved by the AIA, the credit is added to your AIA transcript. You can then download the transcript and post it to your NCARB account.

This whole process takes weeks... all for an article/quiz that probably took 45 minutes to read/answer.

In fact, at this moment I am yet to see my credits approved by the AIA for quizzes I took as far back as March 20. Hmmm... I'll keep you posted as to whether this process is accurate, but it seems like (to reiterate) the only things you do are...

1.) Complete the quiz online

2.) Download your AIA transcript (after AIA approves credits submitted to them by ArchRecord)

3.) Post your AIA transcript to NCARB

Today I received my official AIA associate membership card, certificate, key phob and lapel pin in the mail! Now I can be cool and sly like the other members at the office, and whip out my card when I need to reference my number... hehehe.