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Architecture Ed Changing to Keep Up

Now here's something to get you thinking - talking: an article at Cadalyst which says some interesting things:

With the AEC industry moving rapidly to 3D modeling and BIM technologies, universities are nipping at its heels in an attempt to remain viable and keep their students in demand in the marketplace ...

Although CAD courses are offered as electives, most schools of architecture don't require CAD for coursework. "We don't teach word processing for people to write," said Eastman. "We assume that people know how to write. It's the same with CAD. At the university level, it's very hard to justify giving course credit toward a professional degree based on how to use a tool." But, Eastman notes, although it is not formally taught, experience in CAD is gained through assigned exercises. ...

That's Chuck Eastman a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology Colleges of Architecture and Computer Science.

This is a debate that it seems to me has had no adequate answer for a long time, and for which there may never be a single 'right' answer.

I have been involved in core 3D digital design studio exercises for more than 15 years, and now a full trimester long core 3D digital studio for the last 7+ years. There has always had to be an element of training to provide some basics - preferably for no credit - and the conscientious student always does ok in this. There are always some who leave things to the last minute who do poorly at these exercises and the subsequent design projects and who complain that they cannot do as well with this tool as with the tool they would prefer to use. I recall exercises with ink and tracing paper where similar complaints were made.

The issue for me has been that this introductory modelling exercise requires an equivalent drawing organisation / construction documentation or similar phase in a subsequent core course which is a pedagogical experience that I believe is harder to create.

What is clear to me is that schools need to provide some leadership, but they also have to rely on students to practice the basic skills in order to become proficient. With most student copies of CAD software now at the lowest cost to students that it has ever been in 30 years and with computers capable of CAD also becoming affordable, that out of school practice is becoming ever more feasible.

Your thoughts?