2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

XXX seeks to educate and inspire their civil engineering students through a rigorous and realistic academic program. In the program’s constrained course environment, course topics typically addressed with multiple courses at other institutions are combined into a single course at XXX. One particular composite course is a Heavy Highway Design and Construction Course, which integrates basic highway design elements with planning for heavy highway construction. Students in this elective have already been introduced to the basic fundamentals of highway geometric design in a site design course and have completed a general construction management course.

The evolution of this composite course began with the deliberate development of an Introduction to Highway Engineering course, which included experienced based learning elements. This elective course was taught for several years, and was well subscribed and received by the students. Concurrent with this original transportation course development was the evolution of the program’s general construction management course. Through course and program assessments, the faulty recognized that the transportation course did not culminate sufficiently. That is, students could design highways but lacked the opportunity to plan through highway construction. Additionally, the general construction engineering course provide a solid foundation of construction management topics, but failed to address adequately the heavy highway construction topic. The result of these assessments was the composite course proposal.

A key component of this composite course is a requirement for groups of students to conduct a preliminary highway design and a plan for its construction. The culminating event for this requirement is a briefing and oral exam. The intent is to simulate a realistic context for the project and a challenging environment of the group’s presentation. Faculty members draw upon their engineering experiences to provide relevant challenges for this experience, which ensures the requirement is realistic.

The student’s experience in the composite course, and specifically in the briefing and oral exam addressed several of the program’s ABET student outcomes. These outcomes include: Demonstrating creativity in the context of engineering problem-solving, Incorporating the knowledge of contemporary issues into the solution of engineering problems, and Speaking effectively. The assessment of these specific ABET student outcomes include direct and indirect embedded indicators. Additionally, the impact on both the cognitive and affective developmental domains is considered with respect to educating and inspiring our future civil engineers.