More Like this

1. Advancing Civil Engineering Education: Implications of Using Augmented Reality in Teaching Structural Analysis

   https://doi.org/10.1002/cae.70059  

   Miner, Nathan; Karabulut‐Ilgu, Aliye; Jahren, Charles; Alipour, Alice (July 2025, Computer Applications in Engineering Education)

   ABSTRACT As technological advances appear, it is desirable to integrate them into new engineering education teaching methods, aiming to enhance students' comprehension and engagement with complex subjects. Augmented reality (AR) emerges as a promising tool in this effort, offering students opportunities to visualize and conceptualize challenging topics that are otherwise too abstract or difficult to grasp. Within civil engineering curriculums, structural analysis, a junior‐level course forming the foundation of many other courses, poses challenges in visualization and understanding. This paper investigates the development of a mobile AR application intended to improve the conceptual understanding of structural analysis material. This application is designed to overlay schematic representations of structural components (i.e., beams, columns, frames, and trusses) onto images of iconic local campus buildings, allowing students to interactively explore exaggerated deflections and internal and external forces under various loading conditions. By contextualizing structural analysis calculations within familiar settings, the goal is to leverage a sense of relevance and place‐based attachments in students' learning. Furthermore, the paper examines the development process and usability of the AR application, providing insights into its implementation in educational settings. Experimental results, including comparisons with a control group, are analyzed to assess the efficacy of the AR application in improving students' understanding of structural analysis concepts. Furthermore, the paper examines the development process and usability of the AR application, providing insights into its implementation in educational settings. Perspectives from structural analysis faculty members are also discussed, shedding light on the potential benefits and challenges associated with integrating AR technology into engineering education. In addition, the study highlights the value of place‐based learning, wherein students engage with real‐world structures in their immediate environment, fostering deeper connections between theoretical concepts and practical applications. Overall, this research contributes to the growing body of literature on innovative teaching approaches in engineering education and highlights the potential of AR as a valuable tool for enhancing student learning experiences in structural analysis and related disciplines. 

   more » « less
2. Addressing Issues of Justice in Design Through System-Map Representations

   Cheville, R Alan; Thomas, Rebecca; Thomas, Stewart (June 2024, ASEE PEER)

   Over the last several years the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) program at Bucknell University has established a four-year ‘design thread’ in the curriculum. This six-course sequence utilizes a representational approach, having students frame design challenges through diagrams and drawings before starting to implement solutions. The representations students create provide eight lenses on the design process; several of these lenses capture elements of societal implications and social justice. Within the design course sequence, the third-year particularly emphasizes the larger societal and human contexts of design. A challenge in the third-year course has been having engineering students who are acculturated to quantitative and linear methods of problem solving shift their perspectives to address complex societal topics. In the social sciences such topics are usually described textually with rich qualitative descriptions. In an attempt to engage engineering students, the authors have utilized graphical design representations rather than textual descriptions into the course. Such representations better align with engineering epistemology, potentially making the large body of work in the social sciences more accessible to students. This paper reports on how a particular representation, the system map, has third-year students explore systemic structures and practices that impact design decisions and processes. Students use system maps to identify ways design projects can impact on society in ways that have both positive and potentially negative consequences. Qualitative analysis of student artifacts over five course iterations was used in an action research approach to refine how to effectively integrate system map representations that capture societal issues and address issues of justice. Action research is an iterative methodology that utilizes evidence to improve practice, in this case the improving students’ facility with, and conceptions of, the societal impact of engineering work. This practice-focused paper reports on how system maps can be used in engineering and what supporting practices, e.g. interviews and research, make their use more effective. Ways to utilize system maps specifically, and representations more generally, to connect technical aspects of engineering design to social justice topics and issues are 

   more » « less
3. Developing Augmented Reality Applications to Help Engineering Students Learn Spatial Structural Engineering Concepts

   Yehia, Ayatollah S; Harris, Devin K; Bairaktarova, Diana (June 2024, American Society of Engineering Education)

   In traditional mechanics-oriented classes, experience and the literature have shown that students are often challenged with conceptualizing complex three-dimensional behavior. Within the context of structural engineering and mechanics, the challenges manifest in scenarios related to linking this three-dimensional behavior with member response such as elastic buckling of columns and critical locations for shear and moment. While solutions such as props and videos have been used as examples in the past with some success, these tools do not spatially represent complex structural behaviors and are also limited to one-way interaction where the learner receives the information but cannot interact with the tools. This project leverages mobile augmented reality (AR) designed to help students visualize complex behaviors (deformation, strain, and stress) structural components with various loading and boundary conditions. The tool, STRUCT-AR utilizes finite element models pre-loaded into a mobile AR application that allows users to interact and engage with the models on their mobile device or tablet. Our vision of this technology is to provide a complementary teaching tool for enhancing personalized learning wherein students can leverage the technology as a learning companion both within the classroom and outside to better understand structural behaviors and mechanisms that are challenging to convey in a traditional 2D learning environment. This study uses a pilot study to evaluate how undergraduate and graduate students who have previously taken an introductory course on structural system design perceived the app. The purpose of this pilot study is to evaluate the usability of the app, its ability to improve spatial visualization ability, and to collect feedback on the app functionality. Study participants were asked to complete a pre and post-survey and the IBM Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire after engaging with the AR app on an iOS tablet. Results discuss how participants viewed the app in terms of its usability and usefulness and recommendations for tool refinement. Future work will be focused on conducting another pilot study after tool refinement before app deployment in a classroom setting. 

   more » « less
4. Web-based Interactive Polyhedral Graphics Statics Platform

   CHAI, Hua; AKBARZADEH, Masoud (October 2021, International Association of Shell and Spatial Structures)

   This paper introduces a web-based interactive educational platform for 3D/polyhedral graphic statics (PGS) [1]. The Block Research Group (BRG) at ETH Zürich developed a dynamic learning and teaching platform for structural design. This tool is based on traditional graphic statics. It uses interactive 2D drawings to help designers and engineers with all skill levels to understand and utilize the methods [2]. However, polyhedral graphic statics is not easy to learn because of its characteristics in three-dimensional. All the existing computational design tools are heavily dependent on the modeling software such as Rhino or the Python-based computational framework like Compass [3]. In this research, we start with the procedural approach, developing libraries using JavaScript, Three.js, and WebGL to facilitate the construction by making it independent from any software. This framework is developed based on the mathematical and computational algorithms deriving the global equilibrium of the structure, optimizing the balanced relationship between the external magnitudes and the internal forces, visualizing the dynamic reciprocal polyhedral diagrams with corresponding topological data. This instant open-source application and the visualization interface provide a more operative platform for students, educators, practicers, and designers in an interactive manner, allowing them to learn not only the topological relationship but also to deepen their knowledge and understanding of structures in the steps for the construction of the form and force diagrams and analyze it. In the simplified single-node example, the multi-step geometric procedures intuitively illustrate 3D structural reciprocity concepts. With the intuitive control panel, the user can move the constraint point’s location through the inserted gumball function, the force direction of the form diagram will be dynamically changed from compression-only to tension and compression combined. Users can also explore and design innovative, efficient spatial structures with changeable boundary conditions and constraints through real-time manipulating both force distribution and geometric form, such as adding the number of supports or subdividing the global equilibrium in the force diagram. Eventually, there is an option to export the satisfying geometry as a suitable format to share with other fabrication tools. As the online educational environment with different types of geometric examples, it is valuable to use graphical approaches to teach the structural form in an exploratory manner. 

   more » « less
5. Improving Engineering Mechanics Self-efficacy by Focusing on Abstracting the Physical World as a Precursor to Analysis

   Kaye, N; Benson, L; Headley, M; Sonavane, K (June 2024, nemo.asee.org)

   Sophomore level engineering mechanics classes typically have high rates of failure or withdrawal. Some explanations posited for this phenomenon include lack of student preparation, the difficulty of the material, ineffective instructional methods, and lack of context. Instructors and textbook authors attempt to overcome these issues with a range of pedagogical approaches such as math reviews, worked examples focused on problem solving processes, “real-world” problems, and active learning focused on physical understanding. However, the first step in the problem-solving process, abstracting the problem, is very often missing. At a fundamental level, engineers follow a four-step design process: (1) Describing or abstracting the physical world with diagrams, words, numbers, and equations (2) Analyzing their model (3) Designing something based on that analysis, and (4) Constructing the designed system. Sophomore mechanics classes traditionally focus on step (2) largely bypassing step (1), instead presenting students with drawings, numbers, and text and teaching them to apply appropriate equations. The goals of this research are (1) to develop a sophomore-level mechanics class that flips the traditional approach by starting with the physical world application and focusing on developing students’ ability to abstract as a precursor to analysis; and (2) to assess if this new approach improves student self-efficacy in basic mechanics. The hypothesis of the proposed research is that, by starting with abstraction, students will build a stronger connection between the physical world and the mechanics modeling. In turn, this will improve student’s perceptions about their ability to solve engineering mechanics problems and their motivation to pursue careers as engineers in the future. The specific research questions we seek to answer are: (1) In what ways does teaching students how to abstract the physical world affect their self-efficacy to solve problems in a basic mechanics class? and (2) In what ways does showing students how to abstract the physical world into tractable engineering science problems affect their future-oriented motivation? We are employing a mixed methods approach that combines quantitative survey data with observations, interviews, and course artifacts to address our research questions. The first phase of our research will establish baseline survey data from statics classes taught in a traditional lecture style that will be compared in future iterations of the course in which students engage in problem abstraction as the first step in the problem-solving process. Results will be presented on the baseline survey data assessing students’ problem-solving self-efficacy and future oriented motivation. In addition to the baseline survey results, we will present example lesson plans, worksheets, class assessments, and an example physical model to illustrate how abstraction will be used in the classroom. Future directions for this project will also be discussed. 

   more » « less