CDAT: Enhancing professional experience using digital video

Common to any construction engineering and management education is the goal of providing students with the vivid understanding of construction site processes. Integrating classroom education with actual field activities is a continuing challenge to educators. To compliment text materials for undergraduate construction courses, we have created a CD-ROM with videos and descriptive text representing construction materials and methods. The current project (CDAT) consists of a CD-ROM containing videotapes of construction processes for the Integrated Teaching and Learning laboratory constructed at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The digitized material was incorporated into a Toolbook™ multimedia database that allows students to search and view the video clips using CSI Division 16 breakdown or keywords. Although an immediate goal of the project is to use the CDAT program to compliment undergraduate Construction courses at the University of Colorado, a larger goal of the project is to encourage student-assisted learning by allowing access to the CDAT program over the internet. This paper describes the technologies used to develop the CD-ROM with specific reference to hardware, software, and the user interface. Additionally, the paper describes on-going extensions of the CD-ROM and implementation into the undergraduate civil engineering classroom.