G U E S T Making Foundation Design Courses More Engaging and Effective for Students Nowadays, most civil engineering courses are taught the same way they used to be taught 40 years ago in the 1980s. Classic methods are mostly deductive — theory is presented first, followed by applications. The applications of the theory, and thus the purpose it serves, come only in the end and after methodologies have been presented, leading students to show low interest in the material. On the other hand, there are alternative inductive methods of teaching, where the role of the students is more active (i.e., respond to questions or solve problems, projects, etc.). This article presents an alternative inductive module for teaching ‘Foun- dations Design’ courses to senior level civil engineering undergraduate students. Most instructors teach this course by first presenting different types of foundations, design procedures and construction methods, which are followed by solving example problems to show the applications of these methods. Some instructors occasionally assign a term project, where the students are given a real or hypothetical case of a structure, along with all the information they need (e.g., site charac- teristics, ground condi- tions, loading system, etc.) to select and design an appropriate foun- dation system. The suggested educa- tional module is a combination of a project- based learning method and a game. Students are presented with a real-world open-ended problem and work in teams to develop a viable solution. The instructors do not provide guidance but have the role of facilitator. The objectives of this new method are (a) to help the future engineers become better problem-solvers, (b) to improve their critical thinking, (c) to foster a team-working spirit and (d) to keep the students en- gaged and enthusiastic through- out the whole course. Suggested Educational Module The geotechnical design project is assigned to the students at the beginning of the course. It consists of a hypothetical case, where the mayor of a big city in the U.S. requires the construction of a three-story building for a new city hall. A typical outlook and a simple plan view of the required building is provided. The students work in teams of three or four members and act as the geotechnical engineering firm that will perform the design of the foundation system for the required structure. The design teams need to establish an efficient and constructible foundation system, following the strength and safety requirements for the anticipated loads and soil conditions. This article presents an alternative inductive module for teaching ‘Foundations Design’ courses to senior level civil engineering undergraduate students. To keep the stu- dents more engaged and entertained, the project is presented in the form of a game, where the goal of each team is to be the first to c omp l e t e t h e project correctly. To do so, the students ne ed to g a the r ‘hints’ for the design procedure by identifying the design steps (provided from the lectures) throughout the semester. For example, the design procedure is divided into 10 steps, and the students need to identify them in the correct order. For every correct step, the team gets 1 extra point in the total grade (maximum possible 10 points out of 100) and the first team that EDITORIAL Evangelia Ieronymaki, assistant professor, Dept. Civil & Environmental Engineering, Manhattan College completes all 10 steps in the correct order gets a bonus of an additional 10 points. The competition among the students regarding which team will finish first is also an effort to simulate the competition among design firms in real life. When a team identifies a step, the team must verify it by asking the instructor, who then will provide the team with the appropriate missing data to complete that step. For example, the first design step is to gather information about the soil strati- graphy of the area where their structure is going to be built, and, as a second step, to request information about the soil properties. It is up to the instructor to decide how to break down the design procedure (i.e., number of steps), how to incorporate this information in the lectures and select the appropriate reward system for the students (e.g., extra points). If the students are unable to identify the correct sequence of the design steps, the instructor has to guide them, so that they can move onto the next level — performing calculations — but without getting the extra points. Given that the completion of this project requires knowledge from all lectures of the course, the teams of students can work on it either in stages throughout the semester or as a whole at the end. Also, with the suggested reward system, students have the incentive not only to follow the lectures closely to identify correctly the design steps, but also to work on the project as fast as possible so that they are the first team to complete the project and get the additional bonus points. Their motivation for learning the material increases as they get in the classroom DEEP FOUNDATIONS • JAN/FEB 2020 • 103
