Education
Submitted by Toby Seward
Education development and delivery for the year 2000 and beyond are vital components in the continued success and expansion of BOABC. The blueprint for this success is the Education Strategy Plan, which has been developed over the last number of years to meet the education needs of the BOABC membership, and provide a provincially-recognized Building Code training program for the building construction industry in general.
The Education Strategy Plan was developed to build on the success of previous education initiatives and to set out a plan that would formalize a more comprehensive program in the coming years. Towards this end, there are three initiatives BOABC is presently undertaking to enhance education delivery:
1. Develop Training Courses
The Education Strategy has identified the following courses as the highest priority to meet BOABC's needs:
- Train the facilitator
- Two Part 9 courses (Health and Safety, and Building Structure)
- Exercising Inspector Authority, Acts and Regulations affecting Building Officials
- Part 3 Course (Classification and Construction, Health and Safety Requirements, and Fire Rated Building Materials and Assemblies)
To put these courses into a deliverable format, they have to be reviewed and modified to reflect the 1998 BC Building Code and any pertinent Acts and regulations in B.C. Accordingly, this process will take time and likely need to be supplemented by material that was previously delivered in the study sessions in B.C. The only course that has been revised for delivery is Part 9 - The House, a task, which took six BOABC representatives approximately 250 hours to complete.
2. Development of Facilitators
In the past, BOABC has relied upon a limited number of volunteers to deliver study sessions and workshops. These volunteers have served our Association extremely well, though in some cases it has resulted in certain people carrying too large of a workload.
The Association's objective is to develop a number of facilitators, who are trained to teach adults using interactive workshop sessions as opposed to a straight lecture format. Towards this end, BOABC will be providing opportunities for members who are interested in becoming facilitators to take Train the Trainer courses and work with mentors who can help them develop skills in this area. The three criteria that will be used to choose and develop facilitators are:
- Technical expertise in the subject to be presented;
- Teacher/adult education training and previous teaching experience; and
- Student and peer evaluation.
It is the Association's objective to develop facilitators who specialize in the specific subjects and to establish a system where a facilitator, back-up facilitator, and developmental facilitator is identified for each subject.
3. Course Delivery
As we are in another round of Code upgrading exams, it has become obvious that many members of our Association wish to attend study sessions on all or specific Code material. Given the Education Strategy Plan outlines our intent to purchase and revise course material that has previously been developed for Ontario Building Officials, we are in a situation where it will be a gradual process to have all of the proposed courses in a deliverable form. Accordingly, we are working to provide education opportunities that meet our membership's needs by either using the revised Ontario courses or courses updated to the 1998 Building Code that were previously delivered to our membership. We will target course material that is in the highest demand by our membership and work to be in a position to deliver these courses later this year. If there are specific courses that you wish to be offered, please contact your zone director.