Teaching Historical Perspective Using A Term Project On An Influential Structural Engineer

Details are given on a class project that requires students to prepare a written report and oral presentation on an influential structural engineer. The project includes an extensive peer assessment process completed by the students. The project helps to fulfill the “Contemporary Issues and Historical Perspectives” outcome of the newest version of the Body of Knowledge. The project also seeks to improve student communication skills, thus helping to fulfill the “Communication” outcome. Assessment was conducted to determine the impact of the project in fulfilling these outcomes. Results of the assessment indicate that the project has a significant effect in developing historical perspective by the students. However, assessment results for the communication outcome indicate the project has minimal impact in improving communication skills. Introduction Developing a basic understanding of the history of civil engineering is important for undergraduate students. As noted by Petroski, “Engineering history is useful, if not essential, to understanding the nature of engineering.” (1) Because of the importance of engineering history for civil engineering students, the newest version of the Body of Knowledge (BOK) includes an outcome on “contemporary issues and historical perspectives.” To meet this outcome at the undergraduate level students must be able to “explain the influence of historical ... issues on the identification, formulation, and solution of engineering problems.” (2) This paper describes a group term project in which students research and present information about an influential structural engineer. Completion of the project requires the students to explain how historical issues have shaped the civil engineering profession. The learning objectives of the project are: 1. To expose students to a significant structural engineer and help them understand the accomplishments of the engineer and how those accomplishments affected the profession. . 2. Improve the students’ oral and written communication skills. This learning objective also explicitly helps to fulfill the “communication” outcome of the BOK The term project is assigned in a junior-level structural analysis class. In order to implement the project, two lecture periods were lost for student presentations. The project has been assigned each semester since Fall 2005 with many changes and improvements made over the years culminating in the project instructions provided in Appendix A. This term project was originally adapted from a paper by Thurston. (3) Enhancements made on Thurston’s original work will be highlighted in this paper as well as ways in which shortcomings addressed by Thurston have been addressed. Completing the Project The term project starts on the first day of class when students are given detailed instructions on the project and information about the assigning of groups. Groups are assigned P ge 14140.2 using the Team-Maker functionality (4) of the Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) system. (5) CATME is an online assessment tool that can be used to create student teams and then later to allow students to rate the effectiveness of their team members. In order to use the CATME system, the instructor must first register for an account (registration is free). The instructor then uploads student names in a comma-delimited file that includes an email address for each student. Once the students have been uploaded, the instructor can set up a Team-Maker survey which is completed on-line by the students. The CATME system sends an introductory email to each student with instructions on how to set up a student account and complete the survey. It is helpful to warn the students that the email is coming as it has been the experience of the author that students often perceive the email to be unsolicited (“spam”) and delete it immediately. Once students receive the introductory email and set up an account they complete the Team-Maker survey by entering a schedule of times they are available and information about themselves such as gender, grade point average, self-perceived writing ability, sub-discipline within civil engineering, etc. This information is used to make student groups. The results from the Team-Maker survey are used to create groups based on the availability of students to meet outside of class (using their schedule) and optimization of student attributes (such as ensuring that no team has just one female, providing a range of writing skills and sub-disciplines on each team, etc.) The instructor can choose which aspects to include on the survey and how much weight to give each aspect when choosing final teams. The instructor can also set the number of students for each group. The groups are set at three or four students for the assignment detailed in this paper. More specific details on the CATME system, including a review of the pertinent literature, are given by Roberts. (6) Group assignments are made during the first week of class. Once assigned to groups, the students select a famous engineer as the subject. A list of suggested engineers for the project is shown in Figure 1. In an attempt to limit plagiarism, engineers who have been the subject of reports in the last year are removed from the list that is given to the students. Students may choose another subject with instructor approval, but virtually all groups have chosen one of the engineers from the suggested list. The list in Figure 1 was initially adapted from Thurston, (3) but has been significantly added to by the author. Two weeks after being assigned to groups, students submit an initial proposal about the engineer they have chosen. In the initial proposal the groups give a brief overview of the life of the engineer and list sources they plan to use in writing the report. The requirement to list sources so early in the semester was inspired by the comment made by Thurston that “as deadlines approached, some students reported difficulty in finding appropriate reference material.” (3) Approximately two weeks after submitting the initial proposal, each group submits a second proposal for a visual demonstration to be shown to the class. This visual demonstration will illustrate the subject engineer’s contribution to the field of structural engineering. The visual demonstration must be a presentation, experiment, or other visualization explaining a major theoretical or applied contribution of the group’s subject to the field of structural engineering. The visual demonstration must clearly illustrate the structural engineering principle. The project instructions are specific as to how the demonstration should illustrate the engineering principle. In order to help the students gain a deeper P ge 14140.3 understanding of the engineering principle, the groups must also come up with an example of how the principle would be applied in structural engineering in an application besides the visual demonstration. Figure 1 Suggested famous structural engineers Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782) Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) Thomas Telford (1757–1834) John Rennie (1761–1821) Benoit Clapeyron (1799–1864) Robert Stephenson (1803–1859) I. K. Brunel (1806–1859) John Augustus Roebling (1806–1869) Horace King (1807–1885) Wendel Bollman (1814–1884) James Buchanan Eads (1820–1889) Carl Culmann (1821–1881) Gustave Eiffel (1832–1923) William Jenney (1832–1907) Theodore Cooper (1839–1919) Benjamin Baker (1840–1907) Francois Hennebique (1843–1921) Wilhelm Ritter (1847–1906) Gustav Lindenthal (1850–1935) John Wellborn Root (1850–1891) Antonio Gaudi (1852–1926) Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) Joseph Strauss (1870–1938) Richard "Bucky" Fuller (1895–1983) Otto Christian Mohr (1835–1918) Carlo Castigliano (1847–1884) Friedrich Engesser (1848–1931) Robert Maillart (1872–1940) Stephen P. Timoshenko (1878–1972) Othmar Ammann (1879–1965) Eugene Freyssinet (1879–1962) Hardy Cross (1885–1959) Franz Dischinger (1887–1953) David Steinman (1887–1960) Pier Luigi Nervi (1891–1979) Ulrich Finsterwalder (b. 1897) Eduardo Torroja (1899–1961) Anton Tedesko (1903–1994) Mario Salvadori (1907–1997) Eero Saarinen (1910–1961) Nathan M. Newmark (1910–1981) Felix Candela (1910–1997) Tung-Yen ``T.Y.'' Lin (1912–2003) Henry J. Degenkolb (1913–1989) Egor Popov (1913–2001) Jack R. Janney (b. 1924) Hannskarl Bandel (1925–1993) Jean M. Muller (1925–2005) Heinz Isler (b. 1926) Christian Menn (b. 1927) Leslie E. Robertson (b. 1928) Horst Berger (b. 1928) Fazlur R. Khan (1929–1982) Eugene C. Figg (1936–2002) Charles H. Thornton (b. 1940) Ray W. Clough (b. 1920) Thurston (3) notes that only a small percentage of groups presented a satisfactory visual demonstration. In order to increase the number of groups that satisfactorily fulfill the demonstration requirements, students are shown a PowerPoint (7) presentation of past visual demonstrations with examples of excellent and sub-par demonstrations. This presentation is shown to the students during the first week of class with the intent of giving the students a better understanding of the expected level of quality. The intent of this presentation is to give them a general idea of what makes a good visual demonstration. There is not enough detail given about previous visual demonstrations to allow the students to duplicate the work of previous students in the class. Final report drafts are due two months into the semester. This is typically three or four weeks after the second proposal is turned in. The report is called a “draft” because further editing will be required, but the students are instructed that this final report draft is expected to be of excellent quality and represent their best effort. To emphasize the quality expected, a large portion (40%) of the total project grade is based on the draft. A P ge 14140.4 guideline entitled “Effective Engineering Writing,” which was adapted from Parker, (8) is given to the students (and included as Appendix E). The students tu