Work In Progress: Development, Implementation, And Preliminary Assessment Of An Introduction To Infrastructure Course

An “Introduction to Infrastructure Engineering” course has been developed in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at The University of Wisconsin—Platteville. The course is intended for sophomore students and serves two main purposes in the curriculum: 1. To introduce the students to civil engineering and the subdisciplines, and 2. To begin the development of an awareness of infrastructure and the challenges facing the United States with respect to infrastructure overcapacity and degradation. Details of efforts to incorporate exemplary teaching materials in the course development are presented and the content of the course is outlined. As part of the course, students will be completing an infrastructure assessment assignment inspired by the “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” 1 produced by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Assessment of student learning from the course will be presented at the conference. The course was developed as part of a National Science Foundation grant in the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement program. The course was piloted in Spring 2010. Preliminary assessment efforts from this pilot offering will be presented at the conference and feedback will be sought from conference participants to help the researchers on the project. Background The University of Wisconsin—Platteville (UWP) is a four year comprehensive public university enrolling 6,700 undergraduates with 2,100 students in the college of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science. The university is best known for its engineering programs, which include Civil, Environmental, Mechanical, Industrial, Electrical, Software, and Engineering Physics. There are 240 students in the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department, which offers two degrees: Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering. The program has averaged 61 graduates per year over the past 40 years. The existing CEE curriculum at UWP is very conventional. Students complete basic mathematics, science and general engineering courses in the first two years followed by civil and environmental engineering courses in the remainder of their studies. In 2006, several faculty members of the CEE Department received a planning grant under the (now defunct) Department Level Reform (DLR) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF). In reviewing the existing CEE curriculum for this proposal, it became clear that the curriculum had not changed much in the previous 20 years. The planning grant was used to plan an overhaul of the curriculum and infuse an infrastructure theme throughout. The DLR program included implementation grants that could be used to carry out the work done in the planning grant. Unfortunately, the DLR program was discontinued before an implementation grant proposal could be submitted by the CEE department faculty. In order to receive fundP ge 15381.2 ing for partial implementation of the curriculum reform plan, a proposal was submitted and funded under the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program of NSF. The CCLI project is limited to the implementation of an “Introduction to Infrastructure Engineering” (hereafter referred to as ‘I2I’) course, which is intended to serve as the first CEE course for undergraduates in the Civil and Environmental Engineering degree programs. The development work for the I2I course is the subject of this paper. The authors are the principal investigator and co-principal investigators for the CCLI project. Development of the I2I Course The first step taken by the authors in developing the course was to formulate learning objectives. Specifically, the objectives of the course are that after successfully completing the class, students can: • Describe five subdiscipline areas of civil and environmental engineering and explain the interrelationships between these areas. • Explain the role of civil and environmental engineers in society. • Explain the many ways that the infrastructure affects society. • Apply computer skills to engineering problems. • Explain important attributes of effective technical communication (written and oral), teamwork, and professionalism. • Assess the performance of a municipality’s infrastructure. These learning objectives were formulated by considering how the course will fit into the existing curriculum. “Introduction to Infrastructure Engineering” is intended to be the first civil/environmental course that students take. As an introductory course, the students will be introduced to the subdisciplines. In addition, the course will be a prerequisite for all other civil and environmental engineering courses, and may address computer skills needed by students in the follow-on courses. Eventually, it is hoped that all courses in the curriculum will contain infrastructure content, so the “Introduction to Infrastructure Engineering” course will introduce students to important concepts related to the civil and environmental infrastructure. These important concepts will then be developed more fully in later classes. The course was divided into instructional modules. Each module is intended to be taught over four class periods. Every faculty member in the department was involved in developing the modules. The authors felt that involvement by all faculty members was important because the I2I course is intended as an introductory course for all CEE students and will likely be a prerequisite for all other CEE courses. Each module included background reading for the instructor and lesson objectives. The module developers were instructed to provide approximately 90 minutes of activities for each class period. The intent was that the module developers would provide multiple alternative activities that could address a single objective. The extra material allows the instructor to pick and choose the activities that he or she would be most comfortable using. Examples of in-class activities include: • Videos • Lecture notes P ge 15381.3 • Active learning exercises with instructions • Case studies • Experiments • Physical demonstrations • On-site field trips (to take place during class time) In-class assessment activities were also requested for each module. The purpose of these assessments is to help the instructor determine what the students actually know. Examples include concept questions, one-minute essays, muddiest point essays, etc. Module developers were asked to use a variety of in-class assessment techniques. Lastly, each module included out-of-class activities. Module developers were asked to provide three hours of out-of-class activities (and an answer key) for each class period. Again, the intent was that the instructor could choose the activities that he or she preferred. Module developers were asked to provide advice on how to alter the activities to prevent plagiarism and to include a scoring rubric where appropriate. Service learning and team activities were encouraged, and an infrastructure assessment assignment was required as one of the out-of-class activities. The specific instructions given to module developers are included in Appendix A. Six modules were developed for the course. The first module covered fundamental topics and overarching concepts for the course: Introduction to the ASCE “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,” engineering ethics, licensure, sustainability, public financing, planning, and teamwork. The remaining five modules covered the subdisciplines within civil engineering: construction engineering, environmental engineering, geotechnical engineering, structural engineering, and transportation engineering. The final syllabus, showing all lesson topics, for the first offering of the course is included in Appendix B.