Redesign of Introductory Course in Department of Civil Engineering

Redesign of Introductory Course in Department of Civil Engineering Shih-Chung Kang1, Yu-Yun Liu2 and Feng-Mei Chen2 Abstract: Rapid changes in societies across the globe have led to increasingly diverse and demanding requirements on living spaces, buildings, and public facilities. These changes are in turn, affecting the role of civil engineers and the field of civil engineering. Today, planning and construction projects require civil engineers to take a human-centered approach and consider the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the ecosystem. Therefore, traditional civil engineering education, which focuses heavily on knowledge of mathematics and physics, is not sufficient. We have found that it is necessary to redesign our introductory course for freshman students using a student-centered and application-focused approach. In addition, we will integrate interdisciplinary components into imagination cultivation to enhance the students' problem-solving skills. By studying four famous engineering cases, the Sydney Opera House, Yuan-Shan-Tzu flood diversion, Taiwan high speed rail, and Golden Gate Bridge, students will receive an overview of architecture, hydraulic, transportation, and structural engineering. After each lecture, we designed a related topic for group discussion and invited a guest speaker with expertise in that area to give feedback and deliver a speech. To examine the effectiveness of this redesign, we are going to evaluate assignments and final group projects through professional judgment and peer review. By increasing the opportunities for teamwork and presentation, our goal is to expand the width and depth of students' thinking and well prepare them as future engineers.

Keywords: course reengineering, interdisciplinary, student-centered, introductory course future engineers. In Taiwan, the traditional training models for undergraduate students have always been instructors-centered and knowledge-based; thus, students’ attitudes would tend to be passive, unimaginative, overcautious, alienated, and unconcerned upon encountering problems. For this reason, our educational system ought to train students to be active, imaginative, insightful, and adventurous.

Active learning is more likely to occur in the student-centered model while passive learning results from a teacher-centered model (Catalano & Catalano, 1999). Student-centered instruction is a potential method for increasing intrinsic motivation among students (Hancock, Bray, & Nason, 1995).

Engineering education should be reformed to adopt student-centered and application-focused orientations in order to enhance students’ autonomy in learning, problem solving skills and competitive strength in the future society.

Introduction Role of civil engineers Civil engineering is a symbol of human civilization. Our lives have become more convenient than in the past due to the development of buildings, airports, tunnels, dams, bridges, roads, and a large number of other infrastructures and public facilities constructed by civil engineers. Traditional civil engineers always placed emphasis on durability, solidity, and safety when they design and supervise the constructions of projects. Therefore, they must possess extensive professional knowledge and skills to help them build up steady constructions and assure the stability of building structures. Owing to the rapid growth of technology and economy in recent years, human needs have become more diverse and complex than in agricultural times. In addition to basic concerns, engineers need to focus on human needs, economic efficiency, engineering ethics, environmental protection, ecological conservation, and the aesthetic appearance of buildings. Based on the evolution of society and engineering, the educational goals of curriculum design should be improved with the generational trends. We must teach engineers to be creative and flexible, and to be curious and imaginative (NAE, 2005). In order to let our civil engineers keep pace with the times, the primary task is reforming our educational pattern.

Course redesign Based on previous evaluation, students who took the course “Introduction to civil engineering” were not very satisfied with the teaching effectiveness. The results revealed that the traditional course design could not arouse students’ learning motivation and failed to fit the students’ initial expectations for the course. Moreover, students did not realize how to apply knowledge and skills learned from the course neither to their daily life nor to the civil engineering industry. In the past, instructors

Reform of Engineering Education Education is a crucial process for fostering

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always laid stress on transmitting professional knowledge to students (see Figure 1) and neglected to cultivate students’ extended skills and positive attitudes to face technical innovation and social change in the future world.

In view of the influence of diversity on the roles of engineers, engineering education should be adjusted to face the global trend. In responding to the urgency of education reform, we redesigned the introductory course of "Introduction to Civil Engineering" in 2010 fall, from being instructor-centered and knowledge-focused to having student-centered and application-focused orientations (see Figure 1 and Figure 2), in order to train students to become active, imaginative, optimistic, hopeful, collaborative and ethics-focused engineers in the future. In addition, we divided the 120 students into three classes to promote students’ concentration and ensure learning quality. Previous surveys pointed out that the monotonous lectures could not initiate students’ interests; therefore, we split the curriculum into six sections: lectures, in-class discussion, oral presentation, guest speakers, assignments, and final project. In the following paragraphs, we illustrate each section and its purpose in detail.

Lectures (emphasizing inspiration) We designed “lectures” to enlighten students’ inspiration through introducing four famous engineering cases, such as the Sydney Opera House, Yuan-Shan-Tzu flood diversion, Golden Gate Bridge, and the Taiwan high speed rail. The teaching direction on this section is very different from the past. “Transmitting knowledge through lecture does not guarantee students’ comprehension or their ability to apply it or do analysis based on it” (Sheppard, Macatangay, Colby, & Sullivan, 2009). Instead of teaching abstruse knowledge about engineering, we placed emphasis on describing the characteristics of engineers and the challenges occurred during the constructing process to train students’ problem-solving capacities. In this way, students can learn professional knowledge and understand specific concepts in various fields in Civil Engineering by listening to interesting stories and studying the backgrounds. For example, the case of Sydney Opera House guided students to learn about structural engineering (SE), construction engineering and management (CEM), computer-aided engineering (CAE), whereas the case of Yuan-Shan-Tzu flood diversion taught students about hydraulic engineering (HE), geotechnical engineering (GE), structural engineering (SE), and computer-aided engineering (CAE) (see Table 1).

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Guest speakers We invited eight professionals in total to share their valuable experiences of the civil engineering industry with students in order to broaden their professional horizons and let them distinguish between academic and industrial fields. In addition, guest speakers would make comments and provide suggestions on students’ in-class discussion. Guest speakers can consolidate students’ professional knowledge and help them comprehend how to apply professional skills to their relative fields; when students enter this industry, they will be much prepared. In comparison with the knowledge-focused lectures presented by instructors, the teaching direction of guest speakers is application focused (See Figure 2). These two sections can complement each other; that is, learning is a process of integrating both knowledge absorption and applications.

Figure 3 the library in 2060.

Oral presentation Being an engineer, there are many opportunities to work and communicate with people from various nations or fields. It is a paramount aim for future engineers to learn presentation skills.

Because the world of engineering intersects with the worlds of business, law, economics, finance, politics, and most fields within today’s global marketplace, it is necessary for engineers to develop communication skills that strengthen their performance within the complex arena of the 21-st century workplace (Galloway, 2008). In order to train students’ oral presentation skills, good manners and politeness, instructors requested students to keep a formal attitude and to present their ideas in three minutes after group discussion. Students can practice how to express their thoughts clearly and distinctly within a limited amount of time through the training of this section.

In-class discussion Engineering work is a highly collaborative process (Bucciarelli, 1996). Today’s complex engineering systems require the collaborative effort of experts, and both engineers and non-engineers across multiple fields (Sheppard, Macatangay, Colby, & Sullivan, 2009). Therefore, the training of collaboration skills is very important. Each class, students were asked to accomplish one task with their group partners in class. The engineer also needs “creativity,” described as the ability to respond to challenges by combining in new ways “a broader range of interdisciplinary knowledge and a greater focus on systemic constructs and outcomes” (Sheppard, Macatangay, Colby, & Sullivan, 2009). In order to discipline students’ collaboration and imagination, instructors ask them to give free rein to their imagination and existing knowledge to solve one open-ended problem, such as imagining and depicting a construction in 2060, finding solutions to resolve the flood problem in a residential area, playing different roles to coordinate one kind of connection way between two islands, and building up a global transportation network (see Table 1). When instructors ask students to imagine and depict the construction in 2060, they have to imagine the appearance, structures, and building materials of one kind of construction, such as an airport, library (see Figure 3), wedding hall or shopping mall and finally draw it on white paper. They can select one topic within their preference and imagine all possibilities without any limitations during the designing process.

We hope students’ collaboration and imagination will increase through the training of this section.

Assignments Assignments were designed as milestones to help students carry out the final project step by step.

Instructors assigned homework to students after each class and required them to complete it as a team.

Students have to communicate and collaborate with their group partners and draw on their observations, life experience, actions, and imagination to fulfill the task. Assignments can enhance students’ observation, collaboration, responsibility, imagination, and planning ability.

Final project Future engineers will need design skills, as well as analytical skills (NAE, 2005). Instructors mapped out a design project for the end of the semester. Students were required to select two buildings in the campus and design a pathway to link them. They can link two buildings with any existing, revolutionary, imaginative, or pioneering means, without any restrictions. The purpose of this final

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project is to give the first-year students a design experience before gaining substantial professional knowledge. In addition, students were requested to use 3D computer graphics software learned from the course of “Engineering Graphics” and to operate the surveying instruments learned in the course of “Surveying Practice” to assist them in accomplishing the final project (see figure 2). The interdisciplinary design featured in the final project in this course is rare in Taiwan. Finishing the project through interdisciplinary and integrated knowledge is a great challenge for students because they lack such integrated capacities under their long-term traditional education. To arouse their interests in the final project, instructors asked students to prepare a poster to join a competition (See Figure 4). Five experts would be invited to make a critical examination and appraisal of students’ posters. Students can learn professional skills and applications at the same time through the final project.

students' performance to see if their learning effect is better than students without any design experience during freshman year in college.

Figure 4 final project: a poster designed with 3D computer graphics software

Discussion According to the results of midterm and final evaluations, we found that 82% of students liked the redesigned program; however, they also indicated that the final project occupied too much time and thus affected their performance in other subjects (see Figure 5). To improve this shortcoming, we can strengthen the cooperation of three introductory courses: introduction of civil engineering, engineering graphics and surveying practice. For example, we can arrange some joint assignments among these courses to reduce students’ loadings or modify the deadline for submitting the final project.

Although students have to spend much time finishing the final project, based on their feedback, it is beneficial for their learning. When they become senior students, they can select to study capstone courses to practice how to settle real problems with their professional knowledge. Therefore, giving freshmen a design experience is helpful to advance learning. In the following years, we can track

Conclusion Pursuit of a high score is a very common phenomenon in Taiwan. Many students only care about scores and do not appreciate what they gain in the process. Traditional education places too much emphasis on knowledge absorption, which is not sufficient for the field of civil engineering. We redesigned the introductory course to reflect students-centered and application-focused orientations and attempted to increase students’ learning motivation, collaboration, imagination and other useful abilities. Even though students’ satisfaction on the reengineered course looks better

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than the traditional training model, there are still some shortcomings that need to be improved within the next year. We hope students can be global and new generation engineers in the future. Thus, we should reform the educational system with the times but not stop at the beginning, fearing change. To sum up, we can educate students in this way, but still have to go on modifying the educational model with the global trend.

References Bucciarelli, L.L. (1996). Designing Engineers.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Catalano G. D. and Catalano K. (1999).

Transformation: From teacher-centered to student-centered engineering education. Journal of Engineering Education,pp.59-64.

Galloway, P. D. (2008). The 21st century engineer: a proposal for engineering education reform.

Reston, VA: ASCE Press.

Hancock, D. R., Bray, M., & Nason, S. A. (1995).

Influencing university students’ achievement and motivation in a technology course. Journal of Educational Research, 95(6). Retrieved March 2, 2005, from Academic Search Premier.

National Academy of Engineering (2005). Educating the engineer of 2020: Adapting engineering education to the new century. Washington, DC: The. National Academies Press.

Sheppard, S. D., Macatangay, K., Colby, A., and Sullivan, W. M.. (2009). Educating Engineers: Designing for the Future of the Field. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank the National Science Council for supporting Shih-Chung Kang through grant number 98-2511-S-002-008-MY2. We are grateful to Prof. Liang-Jenq Leu, Prof. Herve Capart, Prof. Shang-Hsien Hsieh, Prof. Jen-Yu Han, Prof.

Hsiou-Huai Wang for their inputs on this project. In addition, special thanks go to Pei-Fen Leong, Hsin-I Chu, and Department of Civil Engineering at National Taiwan University for providing assistance during the phases of course preparation and data collecting. Finally, this work would not to be published without many helpful suggestions from the reviewers.

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