Integrating Design Throughout The Civil Engineering Curriculum The Sooner City Project

Evaluations of existing undergraduate engineering programs continually cite three weaknesses: graduates lack technical literacy; graduates lack oral and written communication skills; and graduates lack design experience. To address these weaknesses, the School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science (CEES) at the University of Oklahoma, is proposing a systemic reform initiative that will incorporate four themes throughout the curriculum. The centerpiece of the initiative is a common design project, entitled $Sooner City, # that will be introduced during the freshman year and continue for the entire curriculum. Design tasks range from population estimates to the water supply system. A common design project can unify the curriculum and allow material learned in early courses to carry forward. Another advantage is that the students will have a professional design portfolio that can be presented to perspective employers. Second, the design project will be taught using the just-in-time learning paradigm. By focusing on real-world applications up front, students will be interested and motivated to learn. Third, courses will be restructured to incorporate team learning and group presentations, which enhances the students interpersonal and communication skills. Fourth, starting in Fall 1998, all incoming engineering freshman will have a laptop computer with wireless communication technology so that each classroom becomes a networked computer lab. Together, the efforts will produce graduates who are self-disciplined, responsible, computer literate, and who can communicate effectively with fellow engineers, management, and the public. Also, the reformed curriculum can serve as a template for other reform efforts around the country, with an obvious name change for the city! INTRODUCTION For the past five decades, undergraduate engineering education has, for the most part, followed this paradigm: class lectures on technical concepts, little or no discussion, homework consisting of numerical computations, and problem-solving exams. Furthermore, many institutions have been slow to adopt high technology (computers) into the classroom, relying instead on hand-held calculators and traditional design charts and nomographs. While this formula has produced generations of competent design engineers, it is ill-suited to producing graduates who can contribute in a dynamic, team-oriented environment, which must rely on computers to solve complex design problems, and which must be able to communicate effectively with management and the public. Articles 7,9,12,14,26,29 and interviews with our own graduates, alumni, and employers document that graduates from such programs often have poor computer and communication skills. Our four-pronged curriculum reform effort to addresses these weaknesses. The elements are as follows: 1) use a four-year design project, $Sooner City, # as a common theme for all undergraduate civil engineering courses; 2) introduce an alternative classroom format that mimics the dynamic, team-oriented setting used by engineers and scientists to resolve difficult problems, problems that are too large and too complex to be tackled by individuals; 3) couple team-learning with a pedagogical approach that is primarily projectand student-driven, also P ge 349.1 referred to as $just-in-time# learning; and 4) require students to have a laptop PC, and use the laptop as the medium of instruction throughout the curriculum, including courses in other areas such as math, physics, and English. NEED FOR THE REFORM HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE The engineering educational system in the United States is discouraging many highly talented students and squandering an important national resource. We have a national attrition rate that exceeds 40% at a number of leading institutions . Many nation-wide attempts have been made to address this problem, but their effectiveness remains to be seen. A related concern, is associated with the level of education acquired by the newly-graduated engineer. That is, are we as engineering educators doing an adequate job of structuring the curriculum and educating our students? We are still using the same passive lecture-style delivery mode in spite of the fact that technology has now given us the opportunity to change the paradigm for teaching and learning. As a first step in the reform effort, through round-table discussions and a review of the literature , we compiled a list of desirable outcomes of the undergraduate engineering education experience: involvement in interdisciplinary endeavors involvement in teamwork integration across age, ethnic, and experience levels strong oral and written communication skills the ability to apply knowledge in multiple settings experiment with design and reasons and know their synergy high technical literacy understand certainty and handle ambiguity a sense of social, ethical, political, and human responsibility a unifying and interdisciplinary view a culture for life-long learning a creative spirit, a capacity for critical judgement, and an enthusiasm for learning advanced knowledge of selected professional level technologies effective time management integrated team approach to product/technology development ability to critique one s self, whether in work or life a thorough understanding of current tools a sense of the total industry perspective ability to adapt to changing emphasis in ones fi ld of study We are aware of other university s efforts in engineering educational reform, such as Drexel s E Program which introduces design in the freshman year, and RPI s efforts with virtual labs . Other institutions, and even our own department, have implemented/experimented with technology-based education, active learning, and collaborative learning. However, we are not aware of any effort, existing or proposed, that integrates all four reform themes listed above throughout the undergraduate engineering curriculum .