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Nationl Taiwan University, Imagination Research Group
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1
Redesign of Introductory Course in Department of Civil Engineering
Shih-Chung Kang1, Yu-Yun Liu
2 and Feng-Mei Chen
2
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
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.
Reform of Engineering Education
Education is a crucial process for fostering
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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
students' performance to see if their learning effect is
better than students without any design experience
during freshman year in college.
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
Figure 4 final project: a poster designed with 3D computer
graphics software
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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.
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.
References
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Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Catalano G. D. and Catalano K. (1999).
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Galloway, P. D. (2008). The 21st century engineer: a
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