From Oh-Oh to OO: The Development of the Object Oriented Faculty

Abstract

The architects profession has always been that of an organizer; a coordinator. In an increasingly specialized society such as ours there is an even greater demand for professionals with a wide range of management abilities. Todays architect will have to organize and coordinate the flow, the means and the systematic storage of information in a project. For an institution that produces architects, it is, in the opinion of the authors, vital to not only teach modern contemporary methods of organizing information but also to practice them. If architecture students are to comprehend the necessity of organizing skills & tools, they will have to encounter these from day one of their student life. It is perhaps surprising (or not) that niversities are not necessarily the best example of svelte, efficient organisations. On the contrary, they are often run on age-old principles that never change, despite acknowledged faults. A faculty of architecture has been developing a system to enable all members of the faculty, (teachers and students alike), with a central service for the management of information. This service is a set of web-based tools for organizing and managing the curriculum and all matters connected to that. The objective of the platform is to increase efficiency and transparency in the administration of the faculty. The effect of the system has been to develop a community. Two main aspects buttress this community. Firstly, the users are made aware of the presence of other users through a Whos On Campus module. This module allows users to see which other users are logged in and using IP Addresses and WLAN Access Point Information, where they roughly are. Secondly, through a range of communication processes, informal communication is easily undertaken with other users online. The effect has been to improve the daily activities of the faculty. Achieving this has come about not by decree, but by convincing and observable benefits from the system.

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