Newly-Released Toolkit Provides Educators Guidance on Green Building
Upper Marlboro, MD – March 8, 2011 – (RealEstateRama) — High-performance green homes don’t happen by chance. Green homes achieve their above-code efficiencies and improvements for homeowners as the result of taking an integrated, whole-house approach to the entire building process. To help educators convey these important green construction concepts to construction students, the NAHB Research Center recently unveiled a new resource that is available online.
The Green Building Educator’s Toolkit, an annotated bibliography for two- and four-year university programs in Residential Construction Management, was the culmination of a two-year research effort by the NAHB Research Center supported by a $40,000 National Housing Endowment grant. The Research Center developed the Toolkit in part by conducting focus groups with participants from 14 colleges and universities, studying the needs of building educators, and identifying what tools are needed to teach cutting-edge green building techniques and technology.
The annotated bibliography represents green-related educational materials according to the topical groupings that were mentioned most frequently during the research: Curriculum, Theory, Technology, Standards, Applications, and Environmental. Specific case-study curricula are included in the appendices. The Toolkit is available as a free download on both the NAHBGreen website and the Research Center’s ToolBase.org technical website, and includes:
* Annotated bibliography of resources
* Instructional aides
* Sample course syllabi
* Approaches to green curriculum
Announced at the 2011 International Builders’ Show, the Toolkit will be a living document, updated as changes such as the next version (2012) of the National Green Building Standard become available. Dr. Randy Cantrell, manager of innovation research at the NAHB Research Center, hopes the Toolkit can “evolve into a ‘wiki-like’ resource where junior faculty can share articles and lesson plans online without having to go through a lengthy peer-review process.”
The hope is that users of the resource will ultimately act as editors and reviewers and information and best practices can be shared more readily. Over the next several months, educators from across the country will be using this resource in the classroom and posting their results for other professors to use in their lesson planning.
To download the Green Building Educator’s Toolkit, visit www.nahbgreen.org/Education/toolkit.aspx or www.toolbase.org/Home-Building-Topics/Green-Building/green-building-educators-toolkit. For questions about the project, contact Dr. Cantrell.
ABOUT THE NAHB RESEARCH CENTER: The NAHB Research Center, located in Upper Marlboro, Md., promotes innovation in housing technology to improve the quality, durability, affordability, and environmental performance of homes and home building products. Created nearly 50 years ago as a subsidiary of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the NAHB Research Center has established itself as the source for reliable, objective information and research on housing construction and development issues. Through its various testing and certification services, the Research Center seal is internationally-recognized as a mark of product quality and an assurance of product performance.
Contact:
Anne Holtz Schmick
