An Interview with David Picken
(“Inter” refers to the interviewer, “Picken” refers to David Picken)
Inter:	David you teach in the construction management course in the School of Architecture and Building, I'm particularly interested in the subjects you teach within the course and what their aims or purposes might be.
Picken:	The course on which I teach is, we have 2 courses in the School of Architecture and Building, a degree in architecture and a degree in construction management. I mainly teach on the degree of construction and management. We also have some students who do a double degree which is architecture and construction management so I teach those students as well. The subject in particular that I teach is Construction Measurement and Estimating. On the aims, specifically they are first of all to introduce the methods and techniques that are used in measurement and estimating in the construction industry and then following on from that to try and develop the understanding of the students in the subject area and also develop their abilities in using those skills to be able to actually carry out measurement and estimating tasks. On that, an observation that I think I'd like to make is that in their working lives some students will actually use these techniques directly, they will actually be measurers of construction and estimators. Other the students won't use them directly but one of the key things that I like to stress to students in terms of why they study in this particular subject area is that they will all come into contact with the types of information that measurement and estimating produces, so as I said a moment ago, some of them might be actually engaged actively in producing the information, others will be maybe managing people who are involved in that task, yet others, possibly students who go on and do architecture, they'll be receiving this information so they need to be able to understand it. The information given to them, what is it telling them? One of the key things that the subject is ultimately about is developing an understanding of construction cost and that's what the estimating process does it helps you to calculate what the construction cost is likely to be.
Inter:	I'm probably a little bit naïve in the area of construction management David, it sounds to me that the knowledge and skills taught in these units, in this area, are very important in regard to the education that students do in construction management as a professional pursuit.
Picken:	They definitely are. Thinking about the questions ahead of time, one of the things I wanted to say is that whilst, I think clearly an understanding of the subject area and its techniques is critical for them in their working lives what more broadly, I think is the question that you were just addressing there, is that I think no matter what course we're talking about, no matter what the subject area, I think all courses need to have some element of helping the students develop analytical skills and those skills can be applied in a whole wide range of ways not just say for example in my case of measurement and estimating in anything that they do in their working lives they need to be very good analysers. Typically though, I don't think we find the subject in any courses called analytical studies what courses do is they use a subject in the relevant area that actually helps to develop those kinds of skills so if say we took for example a law degree, in law, I think, I believe that when students are studying legal frameworks and previous case law they have to get involved in analysis and so a natural by-product of studying that subject is the development of analytical skills. That's the case with measurement and estimating because what the students are required to do is to actually look at construction proposals in the form of drawings and specifications and to be able to measure successfully so that somebody can then do the estimating successfully. You need to have clarity, you need to be able to analyse what I believe are fairly complex things, buildings and the way they are actually described and shown on drawings, it's a very complex thing to try and understand. So if you can be successful in this subject, as I say a natural thing that will flow from it is the development of analytical skills. If you like, that broad aim you were just referring to is actually quite critical as a result of studying this subject. If you didn't have measurement and estimating I would therefore suggest you'd need to have something else that would develop these analytical skills.
Inter:	David, you've had a lot of experience in teaching in this area. What are the types of difficulties or problems that students have in trying to master the subject matter and develop these analytical skills?
Picken:	I think the challenges are possibly threefold that's the way I've thought of them. First of all, one of the, a major requirement for students in this subject is to try to develop the ability to visualise the completed built object because almost always they're measuring from drawings that are not usually in three dimensions, they're flat, two dimensional and so one of the things that we need to do when we're teaching this subject is employ approaches that support the students in developing that capacity, so that's a challenge as to how do you actually do that. People are different, some people are really good at visualising things, imagining things if you will. Others are not, so we need to help them do it. I think a challenge that's related to that is the fact that one of the things we need to do in teaching is to help the students to integrate other subject areas, so not just measurement and estimating, they need to be thinking about the other subject that they teach and how they feed into this particular subject and of course vice versa as well. A particular element of that integration for measurement and estimating is related to the students' other studies in construction technology. One of the things that we have to remember is that construction drawings are produced to help contractors build buildings, they're not built for people to do estimating that's just a supplementary thing. The drawing is there so the contractor can build it and it's quite normal for details of technology not to be included in the drawings, they're not necessary for the contractor, he will just do that, he will just build it. There are details that we need to know when it comes to doing the measurement and estimating they're cost critical but they might not be as it were physically construction critical and so therefore the students need to have a very sound knowledge of construction technology. There is a quote that I often use with the students from a very well respected book in the subject area and it goes something like this “it's been said that measuring what is shown on the drawings is relatively easy, the real skill is in measuring what's not shown on the drawings”. So that's where this issue of actual construction technology is, I say to my students don't come into the measurement and estimating classroom without your construction technology knowledge, it's critical and of course that's in terms of the regular day to day studies it's another subject area and it's quite common for students to think, I think we all did probably think in this compartmentalised way, that was yesterday, that was construction technology, today's, today's construction measurement and estimating, I just think about the one thing, so that's a challenge to help them with that process, to encourage them with that process. The third thing that I wanted to mention in this regard to challenge, to challenge the teacher to deliver the subject is the fact that the subject matter is sometimes seen as rather dry and so as a teacher there is a challenge in trying to grab the student's attention, enliven the subject in terms of the actual study activities that we get involved in. For me, just to sort of probably go on a step further in terms of what we're talking about today, initially what I try and do is that I stress to the students, well it's about cost and that gets their attention. This integration of the subject area I spend time on really stressing that, that its an important thing so you're sort of appealing to them as it were to understand that that's important and then this issue of analytical skills I do some time on that, that's what success in this subject will actually give you, you will have developed analytical skills. Then turning to more specifically to what our discussion today is about, the use of PowerPoint is that I use PowerPoint to animate things, I use graphical techniques to actually catch their attention in just the way that I was saying to get their attention. I've developed study activities such as crosswords using Excel which is kind of another on screen thing and it really gets their attention as well and using learning activities that actually stimulate these notions, these notions of integration and understanding construction technology so I actually have them working on, as soon as I can, real projects, actually doing these techniques and they can then understand how it fits into their working life as well and its something physical they can see its not a theoretical thing.
Inter:	David, I'm really interested in your attraction to PowerPoint the tool and I hesitate to say the humble PowerPoint tool but it's certainly a lower technology solution but obviously a very effective learning technology solution. How did you come to discover PowerPoint being good for dealing with the types of teaching and learning challenges that you had to address in your particular area?
Picken:	I certainly agree with that sentiment that you just expressed there, that some people do think of this humble PowerPoint. But in actual fact it's really quite a powerful type of tool I think. I do, as it were, have a personal view on this idea of what I call low tech solutions to online and it's not some fantastic product that can do wonderful things for us on screen and something like PowerPoint that everybody's got on their desktop usually and so this idea of developing things that almost anyone can access has an appealed to me, but for me I can go back to Harvard Graphics as a presentation style of software and when I think back to the things that you could do with that it really was pretty stodgy. But then PowerPoint came along and I started looking at it and seeing what it can do and like everybody else I used the bullet point type of presentation of things but then just started to think well maybe there are other things that I can do. There was a draw facility in there so I had a play around with that to see what it could do, given that my subject involves the students having to look at drawings and actually to visualise things. The fact that you could put photographs in there all that type of thing which typically we would want to do in a class, you'd want to show the students photographs, it's just in a very simple sense for me, its just more efficient than having 35mm slides in a carousel when you can have them in PowerPoint so there is simply an efficiency factor. To develop some of the things that I've done that way, I have to confess, it was really just on a level of just being interested in these things and wanted to just explore things so some of the animations I used, I don't mind admitting, I actually developed them just by literally fooling around. The one thing I can remember on one occasion was having an awareness of the kinds of things you could do with PowerPoint. I said to myself 'I wonder if I could actually make an image of a ball appear to be bouncing across the screen' and so I went away and played with PowerPoint until I did what I had set out to do. Now a bouncing ball is actually no use whatsoever to measurement and estimating, however having learned those techniques of transitions and animations and the fact that you can pile up lots of images on top of one another and give them a different kind of animation and define an effect. Now the exciting thing is that some of these things have actually been as you might say hard wired to PowerPoint and the more up to date versions of PowerPoint have things like motion path, appearance of objects and literally you can move an object anywhere you like around the screen and make it do whatever you want it to do and I've developed some things with those techniques that helps students in this visualisation thing it may be later that we might be able to see some of those in practice, so that's really how it started off, having this inquisitive approach as to say I wonder what you could do with it given that it was very much a visual thing, there were graphics that you could put in there so I could, I think fairly quickly I could see its potential application and so I then just got into it and literally just started playing around with it to see what it could actually do.
Inter:	Now you've played around with it David, and how do you use the material with the students, clearly you teach in the classroom, I'd imagine you could make these materials available online for independent study but how do you work the material in working with the students?
Picken:	I certainly use PowerPoint quite a lot in lectures because I'm demonstrating things to the students and typically a lecture could be were I present to them an example of how to do measurement and estimating related to a particular element of the building so the students will have in front of them, they will have a paper copy of a drawing and possibly a paper copy of the actual, as you might say, the technical example as to how it would be prepared in practice and so what I can do in the lecture I go through that as a demonstration, I can show them small parts of the drawings, sometimes it's just simply a case of pointing at part of the drawing on the PowerPoint slide that gets their attention to that, sometimes it might be a flashing pointer again another little technique that I've developed that again gets their attention expands, enlarges as it were the image so they can see it. I can show them step by step the actual process that they need to go through. Sometimes we're actually referring to what we call a standard method of measurement which is a published document, I can scan part of that document and actually point to well there's the rule that says we should measure this thing in this particular way. You can illustrate concepts, like for example, you might be wanting to just talk to the students about a relatively simple concept like the fact that bricklayers lay bricks at different speeds, they don't all work as quickly as ones to another so you can actually have an image on the screen, a photograph on the screen of people laying bricks. It's a very simple thing, but I think it actually works really well as it were to get there attention rather than you just sitting there, standing there speaking the words or indeed just simply having on the PowerPoint just the words, you can show them an image and it has an affect, so I do use it in lectures but having done the lecture I then make it available to them through DSO or in some other format, I may give them a CD and that sort of thing.
Inter:	And David, how do you think the students use or respond to the material. What sort of evidence do you collect whether it be systematically or anecdotally in regard to their learning experience in engaging with that PowerPoint material?
Picken:	For me, I think feedback is in two forms. There is the end of semester formal student evaluation survey and I seem to get pretty good scores in those things and I think that some of those scores, I would believe, are due in no small part to some of these efforts to try and liven up the subject, as I said it's very dry, I think it would probably be fair to say if you could get a set of student evaluations on this subject area from several universities it would actually show that, so the fact that I get good ones, I'm under no illusions that it's about me necessarily but I do believe that some of these things that I do, do get the students interest. I think probably if you show some enthusiasm for doing these things, I mean what you're doing is showing enthusiasm for helping the students to learn and I think if you can do that then you start to get these kinds of reactions. That's why I say I think its due in no small part of this. The other way of feedback is just simply direct, you're simply asking students, and I do do that a lot. I'll try something, I mean outside of lectures, I use PowerPoint to give the students a quiz or some sort of self-learning type of exercise that leads them through an exercise using PowerPoint, gives them information on the screen and they have to click one of the examples that I've used is linking PowerPoint with Excel with a PowerPoint presentation its not something for a lecture it's a self learning exercise they access through DSO. The PowerPoint presentation leads them through an exercise and at certain points they'll click a progress button and that link actually takes them off to a spreadsheet that actually helps them do a task. I actually do say to the students 'what did you think of that, did it work for you?' type of question and I get very positive responses from them, they say 'we'd like to have more of them'.
Inter:	In terms of having more of them David, looking to the future how would you like to ideally further develop the approach, I mean are there things that you see can be done that you can't quite do at the moment because of lack of time or support. What's your sort of future vision for the use of PowerPoint in the subject?
Picken:	I do have some ideas and I know I mentioned earlier about a low tech approach, however my ideas probably are moving into the more sophisticated area. My idea's are that I'd like to start introducing things like voice, audio and also probably some video. The particular idea though is to make the use of the materials in DSO or some other format providing them to the students on a CD, as it were post the lecture, so I can deliver the lecture, I can use these techniques that I've been talking about and of course we could probably have video clips in there, I've done that a little bit, but not very much at all, you can use that in the lecture but the audio side of it of course would really come into its own when you're making it available to students after the lecture. Today's lecture was today's lecture but it actually will be on DSO as of tomorrow and you can look at it over and over again. So instead of just having the PowerPoint slides ticking over they can have the voice of the lecture and we can probably introduce some video. Now, I have seen some products that actually help you to do these sorts of things. There's two in particular I would like to explore in the future. One of them is a product called Producer which is manufactured, prepared by Microsoft, it's a Microsoft product and it's designed to be used with PowerPoint and you can actually include audio and video so we've produced what the user would actually see on the screen for example, could be a PowerPoint presentation and in one corner of the screen there could actually be the video/audio of that person delivering that lecture. So if you could get your lectures videoed or recorded what this software, Producer, provides you with is a tool to actually pull the 2 things together and be produced as a package then you can make it available to the students so they can see and hear the lecture as many times as they like. Another one which I saw recently on a visit to a university in the United Kingdom is a product called HorizonWinbar and that looks particularly exciting, I'm sure there must be others that do a similar kind of thing but the way it was demonstrated to me was that, a, there was a PowerPoint presentation being used which has got my interest initially, but what was actually happening was that a lecture was being delivered to remote students through the internet so the students in this particular case, were in the Middle East and the person's office I was in was in the United Kingdom. So there was a group of students in the Middle East who'd gathered in a place, a lecture theatre in some particular place and they could see on the screen the PowerPoint presentation, they could hear over the audio system that person in the United Kingdom delivering the lecture and there were facilities for students, as it were, to electronically put their hand up and stop and ask a question and there could be dialogue in that particular way. So certainly to me these sound like fairly sophisticated things, but I'd like to try and explore some of those kinds of things that sound particularly exciting, so I guess there two things, the opportunity for really good, high quality learning as you might say in the post lecture period when students can look and see and hear the lecture over and over and then secondly, this idea of remote people, so that would seem to fit very much into a DSO kind of philosophy I would think and those are the directions I would like to go, I need some time and some money.
Inter:	David I hope you get that time and that money and they sound like exciting prospects and I hope you bring them to fruition in the future.
Picken:	Thanks very much Dale.
	close this window