Use of ICT to implement an active learning strategy in soil mechanics courses at undergraduate level

Abstract

Nowadays engineers are constantly dealing with more complex problems, uncertainty, incomplete data, and demands of customers, governments, environmentalists, and public. This requires technical skills as well as skills in human relations. So, during their academic background it is necessary to incorporate more skills, social and technological, into their base knowledge. This can be accomplished introducing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Higher Education (HE). Several studies show that the use of ICT in teaching promotes participation, engagement, collaboration, and student interaction, making them more active participants and responsible for their learning. In addition to these advantages, ICT allow to give equal importance to learning processes and to the contents, as the activities offered by ICT allow to the students develop communication skills, teamwork, finding and evaluating information, access, and manipulation of large amounts of data, work with other technologies, update and refine existing skills and knowledge. It was in this context that Guided Exercises emerged. A Guided Exercise permits students to relate models and help them to solve a complex exercise step by step. This strategy was used in two consecutive courses of an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering, Soil Mechanics I and Soil Mechanics II at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. The results show that students considered the strategy useful for the understanding of the concepts covered in the course. Analysing the students’ academic performance, it can be concluded that those who used this methodology had a better approval ratio. This paper presents data to support these statements.