Using computer-aided-learning to train inexperienced surveyors in diagnosing defects in buildings

Several initiatives have been launched over the last few years, to both develop and explore the use of CAL in higher education. Unfortunately few of these initiatives introduced a strategic approach for implementing these tools, which are aimed at the needs and styles of users within the building-surveying domain. As a result of the above, the research has: - Developed an understanding of the learning process and derived measures of effective learning according to the cognitive, experiential and behavioural learning theories, and the different styles of CAL. The cognitive learning style is described, as ...an interactive process within which a person attains new insights or cognitive structures or changes old ones. [Bigge and Shermis 1992] The experiential learning style can be described as ...building up a vast and accurate repertoire that enables individuals to get to where they want to be from where they find themselves, as reliably and as painlessly as possible. Thus experiential knowledge binds inseparably together 'what one can do' with specifications of 'when to do it' and 'what to do it for...' Claxton [1998]. Finally the behavioural theory is described by Bigge and Shermis [1992], who described as a ...change in behaviour, and that behaviour is determined by its consequences. It is therefore by monitoring the consequences of learning that measures of the learning outcomes can be detected. - Shown how training a surveyor to survey a building has been a problem over the last ten years in higher education. - Proposed an architecture for the development of a CAL building pathology application to resolve the problem of training. - Developed a prototype CAL building pathology application to demonstrate the effectiveness of CAL in the building-surveying domain. - Tested the prototype application with surveyors with a varied degree of experience and students to evaluate the effectiveness of the CAL building pathology application.