Incorporating Woodwork Fabrication into the Integrated Teaching and Learning of Civil Engineering Students

Abstract

As an alternative to the traditional structural analysis adopting computer-aided modeling and evaluation, this pedagogical research provided an integrated teaching and learning approach by mapping cognitive domains defined in Bloom's Taxonomy Theory in the newly launched course named Woodwork Fabrication and Analysis for second-year students. The course incorporated ancient Chinese woodwork tradition into the integrated learning activities involving engineering graphics, mechanics of materials, hands-on fabrication, and structural modeling/analysis. Aiming to compare the traditional and new courses in terms of their effectiveness in enhancing student learning of structural engineering subjects, both courses were designed to achieve consistent learning outcomes (e.g., to develop structural analysis skills). This study demonstrated student work in engineering drawing and structural analysis reflecting their critical thinking and active learning in the new course. Afterwards, students from both traditional and new courses were surveyed in terms of the overall satisfaction of their selected course, perceptions of the course effectiveness in enhancing civil engineering-related skills, and expectations of the course to their further study and work. With the student sample from the traditional course as the control group, the comparative study revealed that the integrated teaching and learning approach in the new course could lead to students' higher overall satisfaction and more positive perceptions of the course effectiveness in enhancing structural analysis-related skills. This pedagogical study would serve as a reference for other civil engineering educators in adopting integrated teaching and learning in lower-years' undergraduate education.

Scientometric analysis of BIM-based research in construction engineering and management

“…Existing BIM pedagogical studies (e.g., Tang et al, 2015;Zhao et al, 2015) have more focused on students' perceptions or feedback right after the learning cycle. The effect of certain teaching and learning strategy in students' longer-term career development can be traced as suggested by Li et al (2018a). According to the BIM learning and practice framework proposed by Zou et al (2018), several human factors in BIM practice, such as perceptions, understanding, expectations, and behaviours, could be further investigated and compared between college graduates and AEC professionals.…”

Computation and Learning Partnerships: Lessons from Wood Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Integration

“…Since feedback obtained from material and structural testing offers ways to create intuitively embodied experiences for architectural designers, interspersing physical prototyping can enrich digital workflows [61]. This is confirmed by other experiences, where an integration of hands-on fabrication, i.e., woodwork detailing, into civil engineering instruction enhanced learning of structural analysis and the use of structural modeling software [70].…”

Stabil: An educational Matlab toolbox for static and dynamic structural analysis

“…A traditional approach to teaching structural analysis is centered around analytical methods and hand calculations [20,35]. This approach is commonly supported by hands‐on activities [13,15], such as graphic statics [45], classroom experiments [24], and project‐based cooperative learning methods [2,14,39]. In addition, several computer tools have been developed to provide structural insight to bachelor students with little knowledge of (computational) structural analysis [29,32,50].…”