Excellence Gateway
Published: 19 August 2008
This case study was produced by JISC RSC (Regional Support Centres) South West on behalf of the Excellence Gateway
Sector relevance: Further education colleges
Keywords: 14-19, Assessment and Review, Curriculum Development, Teaching and Learning, Building and Construction, CAD
The masonry students at Weymouth College are developing an ancient craft with the aid of 21st century technology. Their use of mobile phones, Moodle, computer aided design and social networking sites mean that their craft has become more precise and more marketable. When they compare their computer designs with the ancient documents in the local public record office, they are impressed by the originals and often convinced that they were drawn by computer. However, computer assistance means that they spend less time at the drawing board than their mediaeval counterparts.
The College is a medium-sized tertiary college with two thousand full-time and 3,500 part-time students. It offers full and part-time provision in over 90 vocational and work-related programmes. There are also A-level subjects available. It is home to a Centre of Vocational Excellence in stonemasonry, which is a joint collaboration with Bath and York. There are no other colleges in the country that offer this course and it draws students from all over the world.
The art of stonemasonry is a painstaking process: chipping and carving a shape from a lump of stone that has been in the ground for millennia. It is a craft that has embellished all the great buildings in the world from York Cathedral to Prambanan in central Java. However, in the 21st century, the craftsman must also be cost effective and employable and so the tools of technology are employed to increase precision and speed. At Weymouth, they have developed the use of mobile phones, computer aided design and Moodle facilities to help the students excel at their craft.
The process begins on the first trip to the quarry to see the Portland stone with which the students will be working. The quarry guide explains to them the structure of the stone quarry and the way in which the stone, with which they will be working is obtained. The “overburden”, he explains, is the rubbish which lies on the top. The there is the “chit” which is the loose, small stones. This is followed by the “roach beds” which is used for cladding a building and which is pretty, full of fossils but rather coarse. The “topcap” just below this, is good building stone but which has lots of shell inside. Finally they get to the base bed which is the good quality stone the students will use. The students are encouraged to record all this on their mobile phones. It not only saves writing notes, it can be saved on their computer as a visual aid for later when they come to choose stone or write their assessments. One student, Jonathon Randall, has used this to particular effect in his written reports and records.
They also use their phones to make records of buildings which they may have to restore or replicate. They take an image of the building and then produce a computer aided design of the building from the image. When they get to the second year they are taught to rectify the image : put on targets and then straighten up the image so that it is fully square and the measurements exact. In this way, in another twenty years, when further repairs may be needed, the drawing can be placed on top of a new image to show what changes there have been. The drawing can then be colour coded to show a client exactly which stones need replacing.
John Brown, who teaches on the Foundation Degree course says that the speed of change in CAD has been remarkable and that now students could produce a 3-D model of their project in polymer or cut out a zinc template to guide their work. The whole pace of work is faster than for mediaeval craftsmen. “A facility with CAD makes the students much more employable”, he says. “There are some die hards left who won't touch it, but they are now few and far between.”
Computers have taken some of the load of producing a tracery window: an elegant and complicated decoration. However, because the design is geometrically perfect and a repeat pattern, students only have to replicate a section and repeat the pattern at different angles. This speeds up the design process.
The use of Moodle has also helped the college make more effective use of specialists such as conservation experts or geologists. They can be brought in for the occasional day and all the materials and tasks stored on Moodle for the students to access at a later stage.
Facility with It has made the students work more accurate and given many of them the confidence to start up their own websites to advertise their craft, when their mediaeval counterparts would have had to rely on word of mouth. It has also been good for accessibility, says John Brown. “Once upon a time an architect had to be an artist as well because of the detailed drawings that had to be done. Now, all our students can let their minds run free. CAD is a great leveller.”
This work has made all sorts of things possible which were not possible before. At Lincoln Cathedral, the bishop's eye has become squashed over many years and looks out of shape. To try to decide what geometry was originally used for this eye has meant lots of images and computer generated design. The original drawings have not survived but computers will help determine the methods of the Middle Ages.
Many students have set-up their own businesses and websites:
TIP: Have you rated how useful this case study is? Use the star-rating facility, which features in the grey bar that runs across the top of every page of this site. (To rate a case study, or any page in the Excellence Gateway, you need to log in to the site first.)
Disclaimer: The Regional Support Centres (RSC) and the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) support the development of educational e-learning. We may refer to specific products, processes or services. Such references are examples and are not endorsements or recommendations and should not be used for product endorsement purposes.
You can find this page and download any referenced resources from the Excellence Gateway at http://excellence.org.uk/163079.
