This planning grant is developing a sustainable curriculum reform plan for the civil engineering department at WPI that could also be implemented by other civil engineering programs in the United States. Objectives are to develop a curriculum reform plan that will: (1) Adopt sound pedagogical principles, (2) Introduce emerging technologies related to civil engineering practice and research, (3) Enhance the learning environment through new multimode teaching approaches, and (4) Use a strategy that is sustainable and will foster future changes.
A team of six civil engineering faculty members with six external advisors plus staff from WPI.s Center for Educational Development, Technology and Assessment (CEDTA) will kick off this initiative at a two-day retreat to exchange information and ideas, and to develop a preliminary outline of the department's curriculum reform plan. The second phase of this project will take the concepts developed from the three-month study and retreat, and show how a well-established and comprehensive civil engineering department such as found at WPI may proceed to successful curriculum reform implementation. Each faculty member with an external advisor (researcher or practitioner) will develop new or modified pilot courses and service learning projects. Monthly meetings will bring all members of the team together to collaborate on how their activities are proceeding (what works and what doesn't work), to discuss how these activities are meeting the goal and objectives, and to maintain a close collaboration needed to establish an integrated curriculum. Discussions with the entire civil engineering department through regularly scheduled faculty meetings, as well as lunch seminars and informal discussions will occur throughout this project to receive their feedback suggestions. An assessment strategy to measure how the resulting reformed curriculum compares with the existing curriculum and the suitability of implementing these reform measures by other programs will also be developed through collaboration with the CEDTA.
Intellectual merits of this curriculum reform plan will be to identify necessary components needed to develop a sustainable method for assessing, revising and continuously improving a curriculum that brings together expertise from academia and practice. The resulting curriculum reform plan will demonstrate the systems prospective of the field of civil engineering and the compatibility of visions from academia, research and practice.
Broader impacts of the resulting curriculum reform plan include a model for: (1) Other schools to follow, (2) Department level reform that will remain sustainable as teaching approaches and technologies evolve, and (3) Continuously introducing new technologies to the CEE curriculum as they emerge.
