Pedagogic Strategies for Wood Engineering in an Interdisciplinary Setting

The benefits of interdisciplinary learning - having students from diverse academic backgrounds work together in one class - are becoming well accepted in today's institutions of higher learning. The design, build and engineering professions have much to gain from this teaching philosophy as budding architects, engineers and builders interact in these classes often for the first time — giving them invaluable experience and skills for their future careers. According to employers, these critical thinking and communication skills are missing from today's civil engineering graduates. Management and successful implementation of an interdisciplinary course, however, can often be challenging because the diverse student backgrounds impose very different viewpoints preconceptions and attitudes; Architecture students often align with Art and Engineering students with Science. This paper discusses state-of-the-art pedagogical strategies as applied to an existing interdisciplinary courses in wood engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The paper further elucidates how incorporation of interdisciplinary methodologies in engineering curriculum may tie in well with the goals and objectives of the proposed civil engineering Body of Knowledge (BOK) necessary for entry into the practice of civil engineering which supported by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) policy statement 465.