Enhancing the Interest of Undergraduate Students in Geotechnical Engineering Using the CACPLA Pedagogy
Publication: Geo-Congress 2022
ABSTRACT
Enhanced geotechnical engineering education at the undergraduate level is of great significance in motivating students to pursue their career in geotechnical engineering. The decreasing number of students with geotechnical engineering interest is of concern to the growth of the geotechnical engineering profession. Many students lose interest for fear of rigorous laboratory work, poor lecture planning, and delivery modes. The use of innovative pedagogical approaches can help reverse this trend, as it will reduce learning gaps and lead to deeper learning experience. For this reason, a new pedagogy which recognizes the learning trends of students has been developed as a blended online teaching approach. The approach is based on a modified version of the co-operative hands-on, active, problem-based learning (CHAPL) and the discover, learn, practice, collaborate, and assess (DLPCA), pedagogies. The approach encompasses an array of learning styles and fits into a broad range of students. The new pedagogy CACPLA (communicate, active, collaborate, problem-based, learning, and assess), is relatively easy to adopt to the conventional geotechnical engineering coursework. We adopted the CACPLA method to a typical geotechnical design of a foundation course to fourth year civil engineering students at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, to experiment on the students learning outcomes. We hypothesize that using the CACPLA pedagogy for lecture delivery, instructors can increase the enthusiasm of students in geotechnical engineering education.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this chapter.
REFERENCES
. (2020). Geotechnical Design of Foundations Course 2019–2020 Session. Civil Engineering Department, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
Golter, P., Brown, G., Thiessen, D., and Van Wie, B. (2012). Adoption of a non-lecture pedagogy in chemical engineering: Insights gained from observing an adopter. Journal of STEM Education: Innovations and Research, 13(5).
Lapitan, L. D., Jr., Tiangco, C. E., Sumalinog, D. A. G., Sabarillo, N. S., and Diaz, J. M. (2021). An effective blended online teaching and learning strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Education for Chemical Engineers, 35, 116–131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ece.2021.01.012.
MIT-JWEL. (2019). Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab J-Wel Higher Education. Curriculum and Course Design Workshop 2019. Boston June 10th – 21st 2019. Massachusetts Institute of Technology USA.
Google Forms. (2021). https://docs.google.com/forms/u/1/.
Hunsu, J. N., Abdul, B., Vanwie, B. J., Adesope, O., and Brown, R. G. (2015). Exploring Students’ Perceptions of an Innovative Active Learning Paradigm in a Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer Course. International Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 31, No. 5, pp. 1200–1213.
Asoro, O. B., and Osunade, O. (2020). Attitude of Nigerian Students to Online Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic. e-Learning magazine. https://elearnmag.acm.org/featured.cfm?aid=3433688.
Wirth, X., Jiang, N. J., Da Silva, T., Vecchia, G. D., Evans, J., Romero, E., and Bhatia, S. K. (2016). Undergraduate geotechnical engineering education of the 21st century. Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, 143(3), 02516002.
WhatsApp. (2021). WhatsApp platform. https://www.whatsapp.com HYPERLINK “https://www.whatsapp.com/”.
YouTube. (2021). https://www.youtube.com HYPERLINK “ https://www.youtube.com ”.
Zoom. (2021). Zoom: Video Conferencing, Cloud Phone, Webinars, Chat … https://zoom.us.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
History
Published online: Mar 17, 2022
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.