[Dereatha Cross]

The classes are labs that run in duration of 2 to 3 hours a week.  The structure of the course is setup to where they watch videos to learn the basics before they come to lab and when they are in lab they apply it to some design problem.  They learn just enough to where if they wanted to learn more they could.  Resources are given to them so they can go beyond what was covered in lab.  In this year’s Design Intelligence, the collegiate program that hiring firms deemed the strongest in educating for each skill area, under computer applications area Kansas State University’s Landscape Architecture program ranked 3rd.  

[Dereatha Cross]

The amount of focus on each program varies.  For example an entire semester is dedicated to learning Civil 3D.  Where Premiere is a one day crash course.  Dreamweaver, a one day crash course, gives their students the ability to market their work.  The delivery of the content is in both video and written text to cater to different learning styles and is comprehensive compared to what can be delivered in a lab setting.  Their technology courses are all labs so they get to sit in front of a computer and actual do.  They are also given extra material for further exploration.  Even after they graduate they continue to have access to this content.  There are other courses offered at Kansas State University such as their Design Implementation series, a 3 cr/hr course, spanning 3 semesters.  They get to take their base knowledge of Civil 3D and apply it to do more advanced tasks such as road alignment, mass haul, etc.  In regular design studio they have the option to experiment with technology in their workflows.

[Dereatha Cross]

At Kansas State University it is integrated into their curriculum.  They also get 6 semesters dedicated 1 cr/hr of technology learning.  They learn Autodesk Civil 3D, Revit, 3ds Max, E-On Software Vue, Adobe Creative Suite from Photoshop to Dreamweaver to Premiere, GIS from ArcMap to City Engine, and of course some software programming to customize tools and do some script based designing.  Plain AutoCAD is rarely used.  Building Information Modeling /Landscape Information Modeling approach is emphasized throughout their 6 semesters of dedicated technology learning. 

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