DFI Magazine January/February 2020 - 103

GUEST

Making Foundation Design Courses More
Engaging and Effective for Students
Nowadays, most civil engineering courses
are taught the same way they used to be
taught 40 years ago in the 1980s. Classic
methods are mostly deductive - theory is
presented first, followed by applications.
The applications of the theory, and thus the
purpose it serves, come only in the end and
after methodologies have been presented,
leading students to show low interest in the
material. On the other hand, there are
alternative inductive methods of teaching,
where the role of the students is more active
(i.e., respond to questions or solve
problems, projects, etc.).
This article presents an alternative
inductive module for teaching 'Foundations Design' courses to senior level civil
engineering undergraduate students. Most
instructors teach this course by first
presenting different types of foundations,
design procedures and construction
methods, which are followed by solving
example problems to show the applications
of these methods. Some instructors
occasionally assign a
term project, where the
students are given a real
or hypothetical case of a
structure, along with all
the information they
need (e.g., site characteristics, ground conditions, loading system,
etc.) to select and design
an appropriate foundation system.
The suggested educational module is a combination of a projectbased learning method and a game.
Students are presented with a real-world
open-ended problem and work in teams to
develop a viable solution. The instructors
do not provide guidance but have the role
of facilitator. The objectives of this new
method are (a) to help the future engineers
become better problem-solvers, (b) to

improve their critical thinking,
(c) to foster a team-working spirit
and (d) to keep the students engaged and enthusiastic throughout the whole course.

Suggested Educational Module
The geotechnical design project is assigned
to the students at the beginning of the
course. It consists of a hypothetical case,
where the mayor of a big city in the U.S.
requires the construction of a three-story
building for a new city hall. A typical
outlook and a simple plan view of the
required building is provided. The students
work in teams of three or four members and
act as the geotechnical engineering firm
that will perform the design of the
foundation system for the required
structure. The design teams need to
establish an efficient and constructible
foundation system, following the strength
and safety requirements for the anticipated
loads and soil conditions.
To keep the students more engaged
and entertained, the
project is presented
in the form of a
game, where the
goal of each team is
to be the first to
complete the
project correctly. To
do so, the students
need to gather
'hints' for the design
procedure by identifying the design steps
(provided from the lectures) throughout
the semester.
For example, the design procedure is
divided into 10 steps, and the students
need to identify them in the correct order.
For every correct step, the team gets 1 extra
point in the total grade (maximum possible
10 points out of 100) and the first team that

This article presents an

alternative inductive module

for teaching 'Foundations

Design' courses to senior

level civil engineering

undergraduate students.

EDITORIAL

Evangelia Ieronymaki,
assistant professor, Dept. Civil
& Environmental Engineering,
Manhattan College

completes all 10 steps in the correct order
gets a bonus of an additional 10 points. The
competition among the students regarding
which team will finish first is also an effort
to simulate the competition among design
firms in real life.
When a team identifies a step, the team
must verify it by asking the instructor, who
then will provide the team with the
appropriate missing data to complete that
step. For example, the first design step is to
gather information about the soil stratigraphy of the area where their structure is
going to be built, and, as a second step, to
request information about the soil
properties. It is up to the instructor to
decide how to break down the design
procedure (i.e., number of steps), how to
incorporate this information in the lectures
and select the appropriate reward system
for the students (e.g., extra points). If the
students are unable to identify the correct
sequence of the design steps, the instructor
has to guide them, so that they can move
onto the next level - performing
calculations - but without getting the
extra points.
Given that the completion of this
project requires knowledge from all
lectures of the course, the teams of students
can work on it either in stages throughout
the semester or as a whole at the end. Also,
with the suggested reward system, students
have the incentive not only to follow the
lectures closely to identify correctly the
design steps, but also to work on the
project as fast as possible so that they are
the first team to complete the project and
get the additional bonus points. Their
motivation for learning the material
increases as they get in the classroom

DEEP FOUNDATIONS * JAN/FEB 2020 * 103

DFI Magazine January/February 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of DFI Magazine January/February 2020