A DAAP Professor Builds His and His Students Tech Skills

The surge of technology has changed the lives of many, and it has profoundly altered the way many jobs are performed. This is especially true in the field of architecture, something that College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning’s (DAAP) Anton Harfmann has taught for 30 years.

Building plans and designs that were once hand-drawn are now predominantly made using three-dimensional modeling (3-D) software. The 3-D software Harfmann uses is called Revit, but the goal of his class isn’t to teach software. It’s to teach students how to construct buildings.

“My obligation is to teach construction, not software,” Harfmann said.

Faculty members across the country are learning that to teach their expert fields adequately, they must also incorporate technology in their lesson plans. Not only using it to teach, but also teaching students how to use the technology themselves.

Many architecture firms expect students to already know how to use the 3-D modeling software, and Harfmann uses it to teach his class building concepts. So it is necessary to explain the basics of Revit as he teaches building construction.

“It’s a fundamental shift in paradigm,” Harfmann said. “More and more firms are adopting this strategy so we need to prepare our students.”

However, he doesn’t have time to devote an entire lecture to teaching Revit, he has to incorporate that lesson into his typical class.

He accomplishes this through Echo360’s Lecture Capture, a tool used to record lectures for students to view outside of class.

His classes are too large to field questions as he teaches, so he records his lectures and students can review them later to see the step-by-step process of building construction with Revit.

His videos are a mixture of Harfmann lecturing and using Revit so students can see how to use the software and how to construct buildings.

“Lecture Capture has been a godsend for me because it relieves me of the obligation to do an intense amount of software trainings.”

Portable Document Files (PDFs) of the building process with images are also put on Blackboard for students to review. Harfmann looks at the analytics of Lecture Capture so he can learn where students are struggling the most. Sometimes students will watch a particular lecture, or part of a lecture five times, he said.

At first, learning Revit was a struggle for Harfmann. He said that he went to others for advice and had visits from tech experts to show him how to do something. Learning new technology can be tough, but it’s needed.

“You have to get over that hurdle,” Harfmann said. “It’s a tough one. My area of expertise is not the software, it’s the buildings. I know how buildings go together, and that’s what I teach. Painting myself into a corner and saying ‘I will do this,’ it’s a huge investment.”

In his first two years of teaching with Revit, he spent hours learning it himself. Harfmann still comes to campus early to review the software before class.

“I’m still learning and that’s one of the reasons why I love teaching,” Harfmann said. “We’re all on a learning curve somewhere.”