AIA Online Continuing Education Seeks to Go European
AIA keeps pace with the opportunities of overseas distance learning

by Russell Boniface
Associate Editor

Summary: The AIA Continuing Education System (AIA/CES) Distance Learning program is seeking to form partnerships with European providers to develop professional development courses and make them available online. Course options by European providers will be in addition to the existing continuing-education opportunities available through AIA/CES.

AIA distance learning to keep pace with technology
AIA/CES Director Thom Lowther, EdS, recently returned from Barcelona, where he attended a European Provider Workshop conference to glean information on distance learning providers from the U.S., Spain, Canada, Germany, the U.K, Italy, and Nigeria. If all goes well, AIA members will soon have global providers as options for their continuing-education choices.

Lowther believes that distance learning has grown rapidly over the last five years but thinks the AIA is poised to keep pace. “Architects now have many provider options. Competition is not coming just from our own field anymore—it’s coming from other sources. It used to be that whatever manufacturer knocked on the door of an architecture firm with training had 15 minutes to dump whatever information they had onto the architects,” Lowther says. “Architecture firms are now more sophisticated. What has changed is that architects can seek out specific manufacturers on the Internet worldwide—manufacturers that meet their specific need—before the project gets started and then take the course provided by that manufacturer. And they still get the learning units. It sounds so simple, but it wasn’t until the distance learning system came into effect and architecture firms began to say, ‘this can really help us with our business.’”

“What has changed is that architects can seek out specific manufacturers on the Internet worldwide—manufacturers that meet their specific need.

Online learning poses new, complex issues
Lowther explains that new issues and challenges have arisen in distance learning, such as the breakdown of geographic boundaries, Webcasting, intellectual property, archiving, testing, providing for clients, and the language barrier. Working with the European providers indicated to Lowther how far distance learning has come and that it is to the AIA’s benefit to work with such cutting-edge providers.

“Distance learning has become more complex,” says Lowther. “Architects can now say, ‘I don’t really care if it says UK, USA, or China—I’m going to take the best course.’ And the language barrier is starting to break down because it can be offered in many languages, or you get a translator for Webcasting. All of a sudden, it’s flattening out.”

Webcasting broadens the picture
And it’s not just global online courses: Webcasting continuing education has also gone international. “I did a presentation recently for Cannon Design in New York on shifts in society, and there were 30 people there, so I broke them into groups,” Lowther says, “Just before I was going to talk, Cannon’s staff said, ‘Oh, by the way, we are Webcasting this for 11 offices in different cities in two different countries, and there are 150 more people out there.’ I wasn’t going to be seeing their faces, and my presentation was an activity, not just a lecture. I had to think about how I was going to do that over the Internet. I decided that every group in each city would have to do one of the projects and report back. A year ago, Webcasting wasn’t happening—it was face-to-face in the office.”

Lowther also explains that testing further adds to the challenge. “Now take it a step further. The Cannon people said, ‘Oh, by the way, we are archiving this.’ I hadn’t written a test for this activity—I was to ask for live feedback—and archiving it requires another, different test altogether. So someone would have to develop a test evaluation, then a test evaluation for the archive. The next question was: Whose intellectual property will this become? And some kind of a contract would also be needed. You can see the complexity to this. None of that existed one or two years ago.”

Where are we going?
This challenge is growing exponentially, Lowther concludes: “Five years ago, Turner Construction had no distance learning program—it was just face-to-face delivery. About four years ago, they developed a course and, in 30 days, through the Internet, trained 5,000 employees and 15,000 subcontractors. You can’t do that face-to-face.”

Lowther is betting that continuing ed will continue to expand: “The issue becomes: Why don’t we teach our clients too, not just our employees, through the Internet? The same training used to develop employees can be made available to the world, and a company can make a profit off of it,” he concludes. “That is the direction this is headed.”