The Center for Infrastructure Transformation and Education (CIT-E) is a community of faculty members from more than 20 institutions interested in the scholarship of infrastructure education. CIT-E activities have evolved in a short period of time, starting with sharing materials from existing infrastructure courses at University X and the University of Y, to collaboratively creating sample “showcase” course materials, to the current effort of creating a crowd-sourced model infrastructure course outline.
This paper will describe the steps taken to create the course outline for a model infrastructure class using a modified Delphi process. The Delphi process utilizes a panel of experts to iteratively address a question or task. It works well to build consensus using a series of questionnaires administered iteratively over time (Hsu and Sandford, 2007). In our case, the expert panel consisted of members of the CIT-E community.
The process was carried out entirely online during the summer and fall 2015. More than 35 people from more than 30 universities participated over 6 rounds. The rounds consisted of:
• Round 1: A structured brainstorming technique was used at the second annual Infrastructure Education conference held in Salt Lake City in May 2015.
• Round 2: Poll to request ideas of learning outcomes
• Round 3: Poll to refine the learning outcomes
• Round 4: A webinar in which the outcomes were shared and participants were asked to approve or disapprove of the outcomes
• Round 5: Participants were asked to generate a list of possible content pieces and align them with the outcomes
• Round 6: Participants were asked to comment on a sample course outline that was generated based on the activities proposed in Round 5
The learning outcomes and final model course outline will be presented in this paper. However, the focus of the paper will be on the process undertaken to arrive at the learning outcomes and the final model course outline. Lessons learned based on reflections of each of the members of the management team that oversaw the process will be analyzed and shared.
Philip Parker, Ph.D., P.E., is Program Coordinator for the Environmental Engineering program at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. He is co-author of the textbook "Introduction to Infrastructure" published in 2012 by Wiley. He has helped lead the recent efforts by the UW-Platteville Civil and Environmental Engineering department to revitalize their curriculum by adding a sophomore-level infrastructure course and integrating infrastructure content into upper level courses.
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Lead author of the textbook, Introduction to Infrastructure: An Introduction to Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Dr. Roberts has been teaching structural engineering topics for 14 years. He recently joined the faculty in the Engineering and Technology department at Southern Utah University.
Dr. Steven D. Hart, P.E. is an adjunct professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Virginia Military Institute, the Chief Engineer of Hart Engineering, LLC, and an aspiring gentleman farmer at Hart Burn Farm. His research areas of interest include infrastructure engineering, infrastructure education, infrastructure resilience and security, and grass-based sustainable agriculture.
Dr. Carol Haden is a Principal Evaluator at Magnolia Consulting, LLC. Her areas of expertise include evaluations of science and engineering education curricula and programs, informal education and outreach programs, STEM teacher development, and climate change education programs.
Dr. M. Keith Thompson is currently a professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Dr. Thompson received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from The University of Texas in Austin and his B.S. degree from North Carolina State University. He is a member of ASEE and ASCE. His research interests include reinforced concrete design, bridge design, civil engineering curriculum reform, student retention, and advising. He is currently working on research related to integration of infrastructure issues into the civil engineering curriculum and the use of data analytics to improve student retention.
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