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.

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.

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.

This study investigates the use of virtual reality tools to aid student comprehension of complex spatial arrangements in structural engineering. The research focuses specifically on structural buckling response because of the breadth of buckling modes that can occur and the traditional difficulty of conveying information about the spatial nature of buckling behavior to students. This mixed-methods study analyzes pretest and posttests covering topics that require spatial visualization skills as well as surveys and interviews of the students using the virtual reality tools. Quantitative results indicate that students are able to identify and visualize buckling modes more accurately after the virtual reality experience. Qualitatively, students express an improved understanding, increased enthusiasm for the topic, and greater desire for other topics to be presented using virtual reality tools. Both instructors and students note the advantages of using virtual reality to explain and understand the complex deformation modes of buckling structural members. Students feel they have a stronger understanding of concepts after the experience and, on average, show a statistically significant improvement on the posttest evaluating their understanding.

Construction professionals work under stressful conditions. This study examines the stressors faced by cost engineers in Singapore. The specific objectives are to identify the major type of stressors that cost engineers face and to study how stressors affect cost engineers with different demographic characteristics. The research was based on a questionnaire survey and data collected from cost engineers working for consultants and contractors. The main stressors causing cost engineers stress are work overload and work-home conflict. Cost engineers with different demographic characteristics are affected by different types of stressors. The following categories of cost engineers are found to be more affected by certain stressors than others: those who are in a relationship, those who live with elderly dependents or have children, and those who work longer overtime. Cost engineers of different age groups and different seniority levels are influenced by certain stressors to significantly different degrees. The findings may help firms to craft appropriate policies to minimize the stressors that cost engineers face at work, such as limiting overtime work and having timely communication to alleviate their stress.

This study aims to provide a nuanced profile of civil engineering students’ out-of-class engagement by exploring the supporting incentives and barriers to involvement and the related outcomes. Data were collected from undergraduate students using the Postsecondary Student Engagement (PosSE) Survey and were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The most prevalent out-of-class activities in which civil engineering students participate were off- or on-campus employment and sports. Civil engineering students identified personal development as the most reported positive outcome and free time was reduced as the most reported negative outcome. Engineering students identified fulfilling personal interests as the number one incentive to participate in out-of-class engagement, and both engineering and civil engineering students identified lack of time, scheduling issues as the number one barrier. Using demographic information, this study identified three groups potentially at-risk of low engagement: women, students who come from low income families, and students whose parents have earned less than a bachelor’s degree. This study suggests that different disciplines and subpopulations within engineering have specific incentives for and barriers to participation, which policy makers and administrators should consider when creating pathways to support engagement.

Creating an inclusive and supportive learning environment is challenging due to the range of issues faced by diverse students. To facilitate efforts to help students, it is important that educators understand the factors that influence their ability to effectively offer support. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the concepts that underpin student support efforts in engineering. The authors address this purpose by investigating the beliefs of student support practitioners that regularly work with students from underrepresented groups. The authors used prevailing student development theory to analyze data from 17 interviews with student support practitioners across four universities. The findings suggest that there are four major themes that inform the decision making of student support practitioners: (1) context, (2) agency, (3) process, and (4) impact. Taken together, these concepts provide an organizing framework for advancing understanding about supporting underrepresented students in engineering.

This research explores the ethics education of engineering and computing students, reported by faculty, in light of diversity issues. A national online survey with approximately 1,400 responses provided quantitative data for the study. Among the individuals who taught ethics in their courses, 33% were women, much higher than their 16% representation among engineering faculty at large. Differences were found in the prevalence of ethics-related topics based on faculty gender, race/ethnicity, and engineering/computing (E) versus non-E departments. For example, social justice issues were more commonly taught by female instructors and individuals associated with non-E departments. Teaching methods also varied; female faculty were more likely to teach ethical issues using in-class discussion, reflection, and debates. Cocurricular groups focused on underrepresented students (e.g., Society of Women Engineers and National Society of Black Engineers) were more likely to teach students about the societal impacts of technology, engineering and poverty, and social justice than were professional societies with a disciplinary focus (e.g., ASCE). The results point to important contributions that diverse faculty make to the ethics education of engineering and computing students.

The U.S. construction industry is facing a labor shortage. As the current workforce ages and demand for new workers rises, the cost of construction is expected to increase dramatically. Encouraging more women to pursue careers in construction-related fields could minimize the effect of this shortage. However, prior research shows that construction is an unattractive career path for women because of factors such as jobsite sanitation, poor work-life balance, and gender bias. With these factors unlikely to change rapidly, how can existing recruitment and retention procedures be improved to attract more women into construction-related careers? This exploratory study considers the demographics and motivating factors for women who are pursuing a career in the architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) industry. Based on survey questionnaire results from 163 women, cross-tabulation analyses were conducted and no significant association was found between women’s desire to remain in the industry and various factors, including marital status, source of initial interest in construction, mentoring experience, financial compensation, or participation in professional groups. However, women in the 18–24 and over 65 age groups were significantly more likely than those between the ages of 25 and 64 to express a desire to leave their construction careers. Respondents in executive and principal roles classified their communication style as dominant significantly more often than respondents in entry-, junior-, and senior-level roles. Additionally, respondents perceiving that women comprised between 21 and 50% of their company more frequently reported that those employers had programs for recruiting and retaining women when compared with respondents perceiving a lower or higher percentage. These findings provide some exploratory insight for educators and practitioners who seek to increase the proportion of women participating in the construction workforce.

One of the most significant challenges facing engineering education in the United States is the persistent problem of the inclusion and retention of certain racial and ethnic groups. Academic and institutional factors, both precollege and college, have been linked to the underrepresentation of certain race/ethnicity groups (URM) in engineering programs and the engineering workforce. The authors present an exploratory study of junior and senior URM engineering students who have successfully navigated through the undergraduate engineering programs at a predominantly White public urban research university. The purpose of the study was to describe how these URM engineering persisters used different forms of cultural wealth to achieve their goal of obtaining an engineering degree. The descriptive quantitative data indicated that the persisters used several types of cultural wealth, with aspirational, linguistic, familial, and peer social capital the most prevalent. Focus group discussions revealed how the persisters remained focused on their goal of becoming engineers, used the family as a source of support and motivation, and found support from the faculty in the competitive culture of engineering.

In order to enhance students’ individual and team competency in building information modeling (BIM) project execution, this research adopts the team-based learning (TBL) pedagogy and aligns student learning outcomes in BIM with the hierarchy defined by Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives into a Civil Engineering and Management (CEM) capstone project under the framework of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) standards. By designing a series of BIM learning modules in accordance with the different phases of a typical project lifecycle, including design, tendering and bidding, construction, closeout, and handover, this research investigates and evaluates how TBL may help students develop essential BIM knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) and achieve a higher order of learning through role play in the contexts of a real BIM project. The four learning modules address both individual and team competency with core CEM program learning outcomes and are delivered through the TBL iterative process. The assessment of student learning and their achieved BIM competency through the capstone project are conducted with both direct and indirect measures using carefully designed grading rubrics and a student feedback survey. The research findings suggest that the combination of phased BIM learning modules and the TBL pedagogy may stimulate students’ enthusiasm and foster individual and team performance at a higher level of competency in BIM project execution. The use of a real BIM project and the role play conducted by students in the TBL also enhance students’ career preparedness by bridging the gap between BIM education in CEM programs and industry expectation on BIM competency of college graduates. This research contributes to the body of knowledge by providing empirical evidence on the efficacy of the TBL pedagogy in college BIM education and may become a valuable reference as more CEM programs seek to integrate collaborative interdisciplinary team experiences in BIM education to cultivate a more competent BIM workforce.

The growing demand for highly skilled graduates coupled with institutional mandates to reduce minimum graduation credit hour requirements is compelling higher educators to optimize the deployment strategy of high-impact pedagogical practices to maintain their broad educational learning outcomes. In this case study, a micro design-build-test project is deployed at the first, second, and third academic years, respectively, to increase student engineering design confidence, motivation, communication ability, analytical skills, and computer competency. The projects are rooted in constructionist learning theory and project-based learning pedagogy. Students work with engineering and computer-assisted design software, three-dimensional printers, mechanical testing equipment, spreadsheets, Microsoft PowerPoint, and word processors. The microtreatment lasts between 2 and 3 weeks. These projects are designed for integration within traditional instructor-centered courses and are shown to significantly increase student confidence and motivation, especially in female students. The results presented here indicate that engineering design self-confidence can be significantly impacted with a short-term microtreatment that is relatively less time-consuming to prepare than a complete pedagogical transformation.