As a requirement for graduation, Civil Engineering majors at a teaching focused institution in the Southern United States must take an engineering economy course in their junior year. The course focuses on basic principles of engineering economy as applied to the economic analysis of the costs of construction and operation of various engineering works. The objectives of this study were to (1) assess the amount of exposure engineering majors have to engineering economy prior to this course and (2) to assess student learning in the course as a result of various pedagogical techniques used. A pre-test and post-test was developed based on key concepts in engineering economy. The pre-test was administered to measure student’s prior engineering economy knowledge at the beginning of the term. The same short-answer test was administered on the last day of the semester to assess knowledge gained as a result of the course experience. Data was collected over the span of three years (2014-2016). This paper discusses the institutional context, instructional techniques employed, detailed analyses of pre- and post-test results, and suggestions for future research.
Dr. Simon Ghanat is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The Citadel (Charleston, S.C.). He received his Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Arizona State University. His research interests include Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Education.
Dimitra Michalaka, Ph.D., P.E., is an associate professor in the civil, environmental and construction engineering department at The Citadel, the Associate Director for the Center for Connected Multimodal Mobility (C2M2), and a register professional engineer at the state of SC. She received her undergraduate diploma in civil engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in 2007. Shortly thereafter she moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies at the University of Florida. She graduated with a M.S. in CE in 2009 and a Ph.D. in 2012. Dr. Michalaka is passionate about teaching in college and K-12 levels and conducting research in both transportation engineering, focused on traffic operations, congestion pricing, and traffic simulation, and engineering education. In 2020, she also obtained a Master of Science in Project Management from The Citadel.
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