Building Your Dream Home (Building Engineering and Architecture)

Course Description

Sustainability topics are not just a major research field in higher education; sustainability should be taught to our younger generations since childhood so that they can make informed decisions throughout their life. Almost everyone thinks of a dream home; therefore, it is important to gain hands-on experience in building a home that makes us feel comfortable and at home. In this course, students will learn about the principles of building a dream home that considers different topics, including climate, culture, energy efficiency, comfort, etc. The topics are introduced through various fun activities for giving young students from grades 8 to 11, but the core teaching method is collage making. In collage making process, students are given a set of different materials, including cut-out images of different components of homes, including different walls, thermostats, furniture, cars, etc. Then, students will start making their dream homes with the materials presented through a supervised learning process. During the process, students are introduced to different topics and gain hands-on experience in building a dream home. Other activities include drawing ideas and using cut-outs to fill their drawn homes with cut-out images of essential components in buildings. The content of this course and the topics presented are based on two fields of building engineering and architecture.

Learning objectives:
After taking this course, students should be able to:
- Understand the major components of buildings
- Build a home that reflects their ideas
- Identify the most important elements of the indoor environment (such as window size, floor-to-ceiling height, etc.)
- Understand the importance of energy-related components (such as thermostats)
- Understand different concepts, such as thermal comfort, acoustic comfort, etc., in an easy-to-understand process
- Identify the key elements of a home that responds to climate (such as different roof types for rain and snow)
In addition to the learning objectives, students will develop leadership and collaboration skills as they work in groups. More importantly, they will have an exchange of ideas that has been scientifically proven to boost the learning process.