An increasing number of STEM professionals have been flooding the market for the last decade, yet in the next ten years there will be a shortage of professionals in the field. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that from 2012 to 2022, STEM employment rates will grow by 13%, higher than the 11% projected…
Tag: education
Try Out Our Stormwater Beta Class!
If you ask public works professionals what are the most common concerns or issues they handle in their community, you will probably hear stormwater or flooding mentioned. So when we thought about developing online courses related to public works, we decided to begin by creating one about this topic. The entire course is still in development, but we have…
Creating a Great Class
Building on the last post, this one goes into more specific detail on what tools a teacher can make use of to create a great class. This means a class that is effective, attractive, and provides a clear path to completion. Rather than use words to convey this information, I made use of a tool I've…
Making Adult Education Attractive
As adults we have so many things competing for our time – kids, work or school, significant others, hobbies, extended families, and friends. So even though there's an enormous amount of online learning material and educational opportunities the challenge is finding the time in our busy lives to take advantage of it all. And even…
Hurricane: Preparedness and Response Training
There's a little known secret out there among emergency professionals – FEMA has an awesome training facility in Emmitsburg, Maryland where public works professionals working in local government can get free, high-quality emergency response training. In July of this year, I was fortunate enough to attend a week of training there and plan to share…
Public Works Puzzles
Lately I've been working on developing some educational coursework related to the public works field. Through this effort I've come across some interesting online tools that can be used for educational purposes. One of these tools, Jigzone, takes a photo and turns it into a jigsaw puzzle. As an example, I've started with one of…
National Highway Institute Using Virtual Worlds for Bridge Training
Although this was posted over on Govloop, I thought I'd repost here because it is so relevant to the public works industry. For some time, we've been advocating for the use of virtual worlds for training, design, and networking in our industry. And now it seems there is finally a sign that the technology is…
The ADA Toolkit for Local Government in 3D
Most of us working in local government are probably familiar with the ADA Best Practices Toolkit for State and Local Government published online by the U.S. Department of Justice at http://www.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/toolkitmain.htm. The document is well-written and helpful in providing guidance in understanding and complying with regulations related to accessibility. But like most government documents, it is…
Failure: The Key Ingredient to Learning
There's been a lot of talk lately about acceptance of failure. Probably because people are pushing for innovation, and it's difficult to innovate if you're afraid to fail. Thus the numerous posts of encouragement across the Internet assuring all of us that failure is ok. Of course as engineers, failure is not something we want…
The Lesson of Zork – Successful Training is in the Details
The problem with training material is that usually the people creating these documents know their subject matter inside and out. Now, I realize that most people probably wouldn't really think that's problem. After all, if we are new to a subject and looking for a teacher, we would most certainly seek out a "master" of…