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1. Engaging Civil Engineering Students through a “Capstone-like” Experience in their Sophomore Year

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34539  

   Sarasua, Wayne; Kaye, Nigel; Ogle, Jennifer; Benaissa, Mehdi; Benson, Lisa; Putman, Bradley; Pfirman, Aubrie (June 2020, 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   Many university engineering programs require their students to complete a senior capstone experience to equip them with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed after graduation. Such capstone experiences typically integrate knowledge and skills learned cumulatively in the degree program, often engaging students in projects outside of the classroom. As part of an initiative to completely transform the civil engineering undergraduate program at Clemson University, a capstone-like course sequence is being incorporated into the curriculum during the sophomore year. Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) program, this departmental transformation (referred to as the Arch initiative) is aiming to develop a culture of adaptation and a curriculum support for inclusive excellence and innovation to address the complex challenges faced by our society. Just as springers serve as the foundation stones of an arch, the new courses are called “Springers” because they serve as the foundations of the transformed curriculum. The goal of the Springer course sequence is to expose students to the “big picture” of civil engineering while developing student skills in professionalism, communication, and teamwork through real-world projects and hands-on activities. The expectation is that the Springer course sequence will allow faculty to better engage students at the beginning of their studies and help them understand how future courses contribute to the overall learning outcomes of a degree in civil engineering. The Springer course sequence is team-taught by faculty from both civil engineering and communication, and exposes students to all of the civil engineering subdisciplines. Through a project-based learning approach, Springer courses mimic capstone in that students work on a practical application of civil engineering concepts throughout the semester in a way that challenges students to incorporate tools that they will build on and use during their junior and senior years. In the 2019 spring semester, a pilot of the first of the Springer courses (Springer 1; n=11) introduced students to three civil engineering subdisciplines: construction management, hydrology, and transportation. The remaining subdisciplines will be covered in a follow-on Springer 2 pilot.. The project for Springer 1 involved designing a small parking lot for a church located adjacent to campus. Following initial instruction in civil engineering topics related to the project, students worked in teams to develop conceptual project designs. A design charrette allowed students to interact with different stakeholders to assess their conceptual designs and incorporate stakeholder input into their final designs. The purpose of this paper is to describe all aspects of the Springer 1 course, including course content, teaching methods, faculty resources, and the design and results of a Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) survey to assess students’ learning outcomes. An overview of the Springer 2 course is also provided. The feedback from the SALG indicated positive attitudes towards course activities and content, and that students found interaction with project stakeholders during the design charrette especially beneficial. Challenges for full scale implementation of the Springer course sequence as a requirement in the transformed curriculum are also discussed. 

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2. HydroLearn: Improving Students’ Conceptual Understanding and Technical Skills in a Civil Engineering Senior Design Course

   Gallagher, Melissa Ann; Byrd, Jenny; Habib, Emad; Tarboton, David G; Willson, Clinton S (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   Engineering graduates need a deep understanding of key concepts in addition to technical skills to be successful in the workforce. However, traditional methods of instruction (e.g., lecture) do not foster deep conceptual understanding and make it challenging for students to learn the technical skills, (e.g., professional modeling software), that they need to know. This study builds on prior work to assess engineering students’ conceptual and procedural knowledge. The results provide an insight into how the use of authentic online learning modules influence engineering students’ conceptual knowledge and procedural skills. We designed online active learning modules to support and deepen undergraduate students’ understanding of key concepts in hydrology and water resources engineering (e.g., watershed delineation, rainfall-runoff processes, design storms), as well as their technical skills (e.g., obtaining and interpreting relevant information for a watershed, proficiency using HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS modeling tools). These modules integrated instructional content, real data, and modeling resources to support students’ solving of complex, authentic problems. The purpose of our study was to examine changes in students’ self-reported understanding of concepts and skills after completing these modules. The participants in this study were 32 undergraduate students at a southern U.S. university in a civil engineering senior design course who were assigned four of these active learning modules over the course of one semester to be completed outside of class time. Participants completed the Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) survey immediately before starting the first module (time 1) and after completing the last module (time 2). The SALG is a modifiable survey meant to be specific to the learning tasks that are the focus of instruction. We created versions of the SALG for each module, which asked students to self-report their understanding of concepts and ability to implement skills that are the focus of each module. We calculated learning gains by examining differences in students’ self-reported understanding of concepts and skills from time 1 to time 2. Responses were analyzed using eight paired samples t-tests (two for each module used, concepts and skills). The analyses suggested that students reported gains in both conceptual knowledge and procedural skills. The data also indicated that the students’ self-reported gain in skills was greater than their gain in concepts. This study provides support for enhancing student learning in undergraduate hydrology and water resources engineering courses by connecting conceptual knowledge and procedural skills to complex, real-world problems. 

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3. HydroLearn: Improving Students’ Conceptual Understanding and Technical Skills in a Civil Engineering Senior Design Course

   Gallagher, M. A. (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   Engineering graduates need a deep understanding of key concepts in addition to technical skills to be successful in the workforce. However, traditional methods of instruction (e.g., lecture) do not foster deep conceptual understanding and make it challenging for students to learn the technical skills, (e.g., professional modeling software), that they need to know. This study builds on prior work to assess engineering students’ conceptual and procedural knowledge. The results provide an insight into how the use of authentic online learning modules influence engineering students’ conceptual knowledge and procedural skills. We designed online active learning modules to support and deepen undergraduate students’ understanding of key concepts in hydrology and water resources engineering (e.g., watershed delineation, rainfall-runoff processes, design storms), as well as their technical skills (e.g., obtaining and interpreting relevant information for a watershed, proficiency using HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS modeling tools). These modules integrated instructional content, real data, and modeling resources to support students’ solving of complex, authentic problems. The purpose of our study was to examine changes in students’ self-reported understanding of concepts and skills after completing these modules. The participants in this study were 32 undergraduate students at a southern U.S. university in a civil engineering senior design course who were assigned four of these active learning modules over the course of one semester to be completed outside of class time. Participants completed the Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) survey immediately before starting the first module (time 1) and after completing the last module (time 2). The SALG is a modifiable survey meant to be specific to the learning tasks that are the focus of instruction. We created versions of the SALG for each module, which asked students to self-report their understanding of concepts and ability to implement skills that are the focus of each module. We calculated learning gains by examining differences in students’ self-reported understanding of concepts and skills from time 1 to time 2. Responses were analyzed using eight paired samples t-tests (two for each module used, concepts and skills). The analyses suggested that students reported gains in both conceptual knowledge and procedural skills. The data also indicated that the students’ self-reported gain in skills was greater than their gain in concepts. This study provides support for enhancing student learning in undergraduate hydrology and water resources engineering courses by connecting conceptual knowledge and procedural skills to complex, real-world problems. 

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4. Engaging Civil Engineering Students by Exposing them to a “Capstone-like” Experience in their Sophomore Year: A Case Study

   Sarasua, Wayne; Kaye, Nigel B.; Ogle, Jennifer H.; Benaissa, Mehdi N.; Benson, Lisa; Putman, Bradley J.; and Pfirman, Aubrie L. (June 2020, 2020 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   As part of a National Science Foundation-funded initiative to completely transform the civil engineering undergraduate program at Clemson University, a capstone-like course sequence is being incorporated into the curriculum during the sophomore year. Clemson’s NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) program is called the Arch Initiative. Just as springers serve as the foundation stones of an arch, the new courses are called “Springers” because they serve as the foundations of the transformed curriculum. Through a project-based learning approach, Springer courses mimic the senior capstone experience by immersing students in a semester-long practical application of civil engineering, exposing them to concepts and tools in a way that challenges students to develop new knowledge that they will build on and use during their junior and senior years. In the 2019 spring semester, a pilot of the first Springer course introduced students to three civil engineering sub-disciplines: construction management, water resources, and transportation. The remaining sub-disciplines are covered in a follow-on Springer 2 pilot. The purpose of this paper is to describe all aspects of the Springer 1 course, including course content, teaching methods, faculty resources, and the design and results of a Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) survey to assess students’ learning outcomes. The feedback from the SALG indicated positive attitudes towards course activities and content. Challenges for full-scale implementation of the Springer course sequence as a requirement in the transformed curriculum are also discussed. 

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5. Implementation of a Standalone, Industry-centered Technical Communications Course in a Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Program

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--47576  

   Buckley, Jenni; Trauth, Amy; Burris, David; De_Rosa, Alexander (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   The ability to communicate technical information in written, graphical, and verbal formats is an essential durable skill for engineering students to develop as undergraduates and carry forward into the workplace. Employers have highlighted recent graduates’ inability to formulate tight, cohesive arguments for their engineering decisions, as well as difficulties adjusting their communication style for different audiences. Even though accreditation outcomes now explicitly include durable skills, such as “an ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences,” prior research suggests that the field is still far from meeting industry expectations for proficiency in the varying modalities and styles of workplace communication. Laboratory courses are frequently relied upon to teach or reinforce writing and presentation skills. There are two major issues with this approach. First, in lab classes, the communication method is typically narrowly focused on reports that simulate writing for hypothesis-driven research projects, which fail to align with the design-based and project management aspects of professional engineering workloads. Second, lab courses that heavily emphasize technical communications frequently do so at the expense of technical knowledge, that is, the engineering concepts involved with the laboratory experiment. Many students already view communication skills as “soft” in comparison to technical knowledge; and this attitude affects their performance and retention. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a stand-alone technical communications course that was specifically created for first-year mechanical engineering students and centered on multiple, industry-aligned modalities of communication. There are two major writing assignments in the course, both of which are open-ended “technical briefs” that involve background research, data analysis, and justification of an engineering decision for a design firm. For these major assignments, students individually submit a draft and receive detailed feedback for improvement before submitting the final versions. These two major assignments are scaffolded with weekly individual assignments that give students experience with a range of communication skills and modalities, e.g., using a reference manager and composing professional emails. To gauge the effectiveness of this stand-alone course in improving students’ technical communication skills, we conducted pre- and post-course surveys of all students enrolled in the course in 2023 (n=147), and we also tracked improvements in technical writing from draft to final form via established rubrics. Students demonstrated gains in self-efficacy for nearly all technical communication skills covered in the course as well as improved self-efficacy in different communication modalities, e.g., email, slide presentations, and executive summaries. The results of this evaluation suggest that a stand-alone, industry-centered technical communications course builds student competency with communication strategies used in the workplace. Future work will focus on whether students are able to transfer these skills into latter courses and ultimately their careers. 

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