Background: Numerous studies have identified a gap between the writing skills of engineering program graduates and the demands of writing in the workplace; however, few studies have analyzed the writing of practitioners and students to better understand that gap and inform teaching materials. Purpose: This study sought to compare word-level,…

Civil engineering is an increasingly dynamic and global industry experiencing expansion cross borders, resulting in new required competencies sought out by employers and reflected in updated undergraduate program outcomes. These new competencies include attributes that result in global competence. Institutions of higher learning need to…

Background: This study was motivated by the ubiquity and apparent usefulness of general epistemological development schemes, notably that of William J. Perry, Jr., in engineering education, but also by limitations that derive from their generality. Purpose/Hypothesis: Empirical data were used to articulate engineering students' epistemological…

Environmental awareness and ethical moral reasoning are important aspects of the engineering profession. Yet, engineering programmes have been struggling to teach these topics and measure the effectiveness of these educational interventions. In this study, we tested the effectiveness of two independent measures of environmental awareness and moral…

This paper presents a teaching innovation of introducing screencasts into Civil Engineering classroom instruction to improve learning outcomes for students, including those with hearing disabilities. Screencasts are screen captures of learning materials, broken into detailed steps with narration and synchronized captions provided by an instructor.…

Built environment students graduate with good technical skills but often lack the rudiments of management and leadership skills. Other challenges they face, among others, include interpersonal skills, emotional skills, self-awareness and impulse control. This article presents a case study assessing the emotional intelligence (EI) attributes of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a consistent and systematic integration framework of sustainable development (SD) in a civil engineering (CE) curriculum, given the connection between the two. Curriculum integration is a challenging project and requires the development of certain protocols to ensure success.…

The integrity of a structural system depends on the strength of materials, shape of the individual member and the elements used to hold the members together. In most undergraduate civil engineering curricula, a structural steel and/or reinforced concrete design course is required. Usually, the main focus of these courses is on member selection…

Purpose: In today's complex society, there is an increasing demand to include a wider set of skills in engineering curricula, especially skills related to policy, society and sustainable development. Role-playing and gaming are active learning tools, which are useful for learning relationships between technology and society, problem solving in…

As the National Science Foundation and engineers throughout the world seek to strengthen the future of the engineering profession, the Civil Engineering (CE) program at the United States Coast Guard Academy embodies this initiative with a student focused approach. One course in particular, Materials for Civil and Construction Engineers (CE…

The article reports on a case study of impact evaluation of external quality assurance, i.e. institutional evaluation including programme accreditation, which was carried out by the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education at Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest in the form of a methodological before-after…

Conventional graded assignments are commonly structured in a format where students attempt a prescribed question and are graded based on the completeness of their workings rather than the understanding of concepts. An alternative assignment format was proposed which requires students to identify and explain mistakes in a given set of workings…

This paper presents an innovative interactive scenario framework called ISLEC for the learning of electrical circuits by high school students or beginners of higher education. This framework aims to develop investigative, critical, creative, and decision-making skills by trainees, as well as aiming to tackle and resolve misunderstandings and…

The aim of this study was to understand how students' attitudes were connected to the web based software Socrative. The study was conducted with 50 students taking first year physics courses in a university. The survey dimensions were based on four previous research works and the survey instrument was extended to better reflect the current study…

Background: The personal epistemologies of engineering faculty are an important and as yet underinvestigated aspect of engineering education. In this study, personal epistemology is defined as the stances an individual takes on issues related to knowledge and knowing, such as what it means to know, what counts as knowledge, and what makes some…