Forum papers are thought-provoking opinion pieces or essays founded in fact, sometimes containing speculation, on a civil engineering topic of general interest and relevance to the readership of the journal. The views expressed in this Forum article do not necessarily reflect the views of ASCE or the Editorial Board of the journal.

Civil infrastructure refers to the built environment (sometimes referred to as public works) and consists of roads, bridges, buildings, dams, levees, drinking water treatment facilities, wastewater treatment facilities, power generation and transmission facilities, communications, solid waste facilities, hazardous waste facilities, and other sectors. Although there is a need to train engineers who have a holistic view of infrastructure, there is evidence that civil and environmental engineering (CEE) programs have not fully addressed this increasingly recognized need. One effective approach to address this educational gap is to incorporate a course related to infrastructure into the curriculum for first-year or second-year civil and environmental engineering students. Therefore, this study assesses the current status of teaching such courses in the United States and identifies the incentives for, and the barriers against, incorporating an introduction to infrastructure course into schools’ current CEE curricula. Two distinct activities enabled these objectives. First, a questionnaire was distributed to CEE programs across the United States, to which 33 responses were received. The results indicated that although the majority of participants believe that offering such a course will benefit students by increasing the breadth of the curriculum and by providing a holistic view of CEE, barriers such as the maximum allowable credits for graduation, the lack of motivation within a department—either because such a course did not have a champion or because the department had no plans to revise their curriculum—and a lack of expertise among faculty members inhibited inclusion of the course in curricula. Second, three case studies demonstrating successful inclusion of an introduction to infrastructure course into the CEE curriculum were evaluated. Cases were collected from Marquette University, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, and West Point CEE programs, and it was found that the key to success in including such a course is a motivated team of faculty members who are committed to educating students about different aspects of infrastructure. The results of the study can be used as a road map to help universities successfully incorporate an introduction to infrastructure course in their CEE programs.

The new ASCE Vision and Body of Knowledge embraces the attitude toward and skills of lifelong learning, indicating the need of acquiring self-regulated learning (SRL) skills. Although civil engineering education has primarily focused on instilling technological knowledge to students, less attention has been paid toward offering deliberate training for nurturing such required high-order skills based on how people learn. This paper introduces the theoretical construct of SRL and the effective pedagogies of cultivating SRL skills from educational research findings, presents a novel instructional framework and its procedures to support students’ SRL skill development, and reports its implementation outcomes in civil engineering curricula at a minority-serving institution. The key instructional strategy is to integrate the prompted self-assessment with the course learning tasks into the students’ learning processes. Its effect has been evaluated through the feasible assessment practice. Assessment results reveal that the presented framework may benefit students’ learning performance, and the majority of students perceived the importance of SRL skills and were interested in developing SRL skills. The limitations of this study and future improvement are also discussed.

Engineering graduates require high-level cognitive abilities such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation to fulfill their obligations to society. But universities have not always been successful in developing such abilities. This paper questions whether engineering students in a civil engineering degree program at a university in South Africa are being adequately prepared to engage in higher-order cognitive activities such as reasoning, predicting, analyzing, and problem solving. The paper deploys the structure of the observed learning outcome (SOLO) taxonomy to classify assessment questions according to cognitive demand and compares first- and second-year students’ abilities to deal with questions of varying cognitive complexity. The results show that the second-year cohort performed substantively better on questions requiring mathematical calculation but not in other question types. In fact, they performed slightly worse on high-cognitive-demand questions and substantially worse on questions requiring visual identification of problems. This may imply that the additional year of higher education serves to equip students with improved mathematical abilities but does little to enhance their ability to engage in high-cognitive-demand activities.

Because engineers are responsible for the design phase of projects where decisions impacting sustainability are most effectively made, it is important to ensure that students are equipped with the necessary conceptual knowledge to engage in sustainable design. Consequently, undergraduate engineering curricula are being reformed to address sustainability-related concepts and topics. In addition, previous work has demonstrated that beyond curricular content, innovative pedagogical approaches are also important for enhancing student learning. The goal of this work was to examine the impact of a learning-cycle-based sustainability module on students’ conceptual understanding of sustainability in two varying institutional contexts. The module was integrated into the first course in the capstone design sequence at James Madison University, where sustainability was incorporated throughout the curriculum. The module was also integrated into a capstone design course at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where sustainability was primarily incorporated into an earlier, single course. Based on concept map assessments, significant improvements in conceptual sustainability knowledge were demonstrated for both groups of students. However, learning gains were more significant for students from James Madison University, likely because the module was effectively integrated into the design course and sustainability was emphasized in other course activities. Overall, this study provides theoretically grounded, empirically tested learning materials and assessment methods that can be adapted for other engineering courses.

This study presents the results of a survey of new civil engineering students at a large, conservative, land-grant university. Students were asked a set of questions about engineering ethics and professional issues; these were designed to determine their opinions on the relative importance of sustainability in the professional practice of engineering. Of 192 students approached, 130 (67%) completed the survey, with participant demographics resembling that of the department as a whole. Students viewed sustainability favorably, with nearly all agreeing (43%) or strongly agreeing (55%) with the statement “engineers should strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of their duties.” When asked to rank a set of societal priorities, students valued people-centric objectives (e.g., quality of human life) most highly followed by planet-centric objectives (e.g., quality of the environment). Prosperity-centric objectives (e.g., economic growth) were rated the lowest. Students from ethnic minorities ranked the objectives in ways significantly different ($p<0.05$) from the overall group, as did students intending to specialize in the subdisciplines of environmental engineering, water resources engineering, and geotechnical engineering. Gender appeared to have no effect on student views of sustainability or societal priorities. These findings have positive implications for the receptiveness and responsiveness of civil engineering students to sustainability education, particularly where affective, or behavioral-based, learning outcomes are desired.

This paper presents a teaching approach aiming to give students the chance of applying theoretical concepts in virtual environments, thereby overcoming limitations in overcrowded classes or in large groups of engineering undergraduates using available testing equipment. The proposed approach deals with enhancing self-learning of one of the most common tests used in materials engineering and/or civil engineering, namely, the compression test of concrete samples. To achieve this goal, two didactic-propose computational tools were developed: a virtual laboratory (VL) and video tutorials (VTs). Furthermore, two different teaching/learning experiences are compared in this paper: (1) using actual laboratory after using both virtual environments (VL and VTs); and (2) using only virtual environments. In both cases the use of these virtual tools improves the student learning outcomes, especially when these resources fulfill a lack of real equipment. Besides, the results of survey questions show the high motivation that virtual environments awake, and the assessment results reflect an increase in the students’ marks.

The concept of sustainability is regarded to be threefold: environmental, economic, and social. This is usually identified as the triple bottom line of sustainability and is often represented by three intertwined circles. Therefore, for a construction to be sustainable, it should be environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable. However, the extent to which green building rating tools evaluate the three pillars of sustainability is questionable. This research aims to analyze the effectiveness of eight international green building rating tools in evaluating environmental, economic, and social sustainability in buildings. The credit points of each rating tool was initially categorized based on the related category of sustainability and a comparison analysis was carried out based on a normalized score. Finally, the comparison result is presented with a radar diagram. Further, three case study buildings were also analyzed based on the credit points achieved. Accordingly, environmental sustainability is widely considered in green building rating tools while economic sustainability is rarely evaluated. Further, social sustainability is evaluated in all the green building rating tools, which would approximately amount to 20% of the credit points allocated by each rating tool.

Addition of sustainability-related material is becoming a point of emphasis in engineering education. Freely available modular lessons are one way to quickly effect this incorporation. This research examines the effectiveness of a class format using short prerecorded software modules on lifecycle assessment (LCA) in the classroom setting with associated discussion, primarily drawing from student perspectives in a graduate-level LCA course at Washington State University. Survey results indicated that students generally agreed that the in-class module-discussion format was an effective teaching method. Advantages included that the format was organized and complete, but still concise, allowed for review of material outside of class, and that discussion components furthered understanding and stimulated further thought about the concepts. Key disadvantages included that the modules can get boring, were sometimes too fast-paced, and that questions usually were held until the end of the presentation. Students were happy with the length of modules (about 20 min each), but many expressed a desire for additional discussion time. Recommendations for future versions of the course include taking additional breaks during modules for discussion, encouraging students to ask questions at any time, and suggesting that some students print slides to stay engaged with note taking. In the future it is anticipated that these types of narrated modules will make it easier for other instructors to provide more sustainability education in their classrooms.