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Training Series in Primary Trades Increasingly Popular
The Home Builders Institute's (HBI) Residential Construction Academy (RCA) Series of instructional materials is becoming an increasingly popular learning resource among enrollees in vocational training schools and students who are taking classes in construction technology.
Prepared in collaboration with publisher Thomson Delmar Learning, HBI’s modern, accessible teaching system in the primary trades now runs to five volumes, with more in the works.
The series currently includes four-color, fully illustrated textbooks on carpentry, electrical principles, house wiring, HVAC and plumbing.
A modular reference book on facilities maintenance will debut in 2006, and it will be followed by a text on concrete masonry.
Each textbook is accompanied by a number of multi-media instructional aids, including 20-minute videos and CD-ROMs that provide hands-on demonstrations, image libraries and the latest skill standards for the trade.
The curriculum for the series was carefully planned in tandem with craft trade skill standards developed by NAHB members.
Many vocational schools have begun large-scale adoptions of the RCA Series curriculum and they have been reporting positive results. “The more I use the RCA Series, the more I like it,” said Alain Archuleta, an instructor at Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute in New Mexico.
Thomson Delmar Learning reports that sales for the series have exceeded its initial projections and this year have been running 66% ahead of 2004.
The Fairfax County, Va. public school system has adopted the series for its vocational schools, and Connecticut’s Regional Vocational Technical High School system and the trades training programs operated by the Virginia Department of Corrections are in the process of doing so.
The well-known and popular Building Trades Academy at the Tidewater Builders Association (TBA) in Chesapeake, Va. also uses the RCA Series. Channing Pfeiffer, the association’s executive officer, finds that the series is “user-friendly and students seem to really respond to it.”
For more information on the RCA Series, e-mail Joseph Krinock at HBI, or call him at 800-795-7955 x8928.
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