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The use of teamwork in courses has many benefits for students beyond simply the development of collaboration skills. When compared to individual learning alone, teamwork can support deeper understanding of the material, a more interactive class environment, and improved knowledge retention. Therefore, the senior-level design course Coastal Engineering was modified in 2022 with the addition of teamwork elements in two course components: homework assignments and in-class quizzes. The homework assignments were completed in small groups, with teams submitting a joint homework solution. The objective of assigning homework to groups rather than individuals was to have students work together and discuss the problems and course concepts. To discourage "divide and conquer" approaches and hold students accountable for understanding the full homework assignment, students were required to participate in one-on-one homework chats with an instructor. During the chats, students were asked to briefly explain the concepts behind an instructor-selected part of the homework assignment. Teamwork was also added to in-class quizzes, focused on conceptual type questions. The in-class quizzes were closedbook and closed-note, but "open-classmate," meaning the students were free to interact with other students in the class in any manner they chose prior to submitting their own quiz solution. Multiple assessments tracked how effectively students were working on teams. The assessments included surveys, administered to students after teamwork activities, to identify both perceived benefits of teamwork and common issues that the students had encountered. Survey responses indicated that team activities greatly enhanced opportunities for developing skills for working cooperatively; students learned to listen to each other's opinions to solve problems together but were also held individually accountable for understanding the team's final product through the one-on-one homework chats. After the first two surveys, common teamwork issues reported in the responses were addressed with an in-class session on maximizing team effectiveness. Additionally, direct assessments were conducted by comparing student performance on individually-completed conceptual exam questions between the 2022 cohort and prior cohorts that took the class without the new teamwork elements. The 2022 cohort showed significant improvement in mastery of the course concepts relative to cohorts from several previous semesters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For students to become engineers who habitually seek out opportunities to create extraordinary value, they need to understand the different stakeholders who are impacted by the designs they create. In a typical civil engineering design process, direct stakeholders (e.g. the client) may be involved during the beginning of the process when establishing the criteria of the project, with perhaps some limited community engagement during public outreach. This approach however limits the perspectives contributing to a project. Values Sensitive Design (VSD) is a methodology that asks the engineer to systematically consider values and norms, direct and indirect stakeholders, and the long-lasting impacts early and throughout the design process to craft more equitable solutions and reduce or eliminate unintended consequences. In a senior technical elective course offered in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, students explore the direct and indirect stakeholders involved in a coastal engineering design example. During an inclass session, students learn how to brainstorm the values and norms of stakeholders that they identify, and then integrate those values into design criteria such that it benefits a broader swath of the community. The students then applied the VSD concepts to a course project that required them to create design criteria that satisfied stakeholder's needs beyond the original client. The inclusion of this activity in the course curriculum created students who were more invested and aware of the potential impacts of their design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls from the American Society of Civil Engineers and the National Academy of Engineering, and a similar but more recent statement from the National Association of Colleges and Employers all assert the need for engineers that are not only competent with a certain set of knowledge and skills, but also have a mindset for creating value. In order to accomplish this, engineering content needs to not only engage the students cognitively but also in the affective domain, fostering students' identity as engineers who have an entrepreneurial mindset. We present two accounts of how story-driven learning and focused team development were integrated into different courses and highlight how they can amplify the impacts of activities fostering curiosity, connections, and value creation (the 3Cs), which nurture entrepreneurial mindset. In one, this results in students who have more clarity regarding their own engineering identity and the unique perspectives their peers can contribute. In the other, students learned and applied principles of effective teaming and used stories to reflect on their experiences. Student reflections, individually and in teams, show augmented self-awareness, appreciation of trust and stronger connections as keys to stronger teams, and an association of stronger teams with better teamwork, affecting project outcomes. Their reflections highlight how teams and stories may be used together to augment student connections and project outcomes, adding value both to the learning experience and outcomes, and, in so doing, to future academic and professional project experiences. Ultimately this creates students who are more self-aware and proficient in collaboration, identify more deeply with the profession, and can integrate the 3Cs into their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our efforts to develop more holistic engineers with entrepreneurial mindset, faculty in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology have been exploring what it takes to create and refine effective learning environments for knowledge, skills and mindset development. This poster discusses promising approaches being implemented to support such development and identifies emerging effective practices, challenges and future work. In particular, we address the following questions: (1) How can we develop effective learning environments for knowledge, skills, and mindset development to enhance engineering and broader learning outcomes? (2) What pedagogies appear to be more effective in advancing multiple learning objectives simultaneously? And (3) What are effective strategies for engaging the broader community in a changing culture that incorporates mindset development alongside knowledge and skills development? Supported by an NSF RED grant and a KEEN grant, this work presents intermediate results from an ongoing effort to increase student engagement and retention at each stage of the degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationwide, 40-60% of engineering students leave their engineering major, with women and underrepresented minorities doing so at higher rates. In the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at Georgia Institute of Technology in recent years, 50% of students have changed to a new major in their first two years, while roughly the same numbers have entered the program simultaneously from other engineering majors. Similar departure rates are seen in programs across the country. Reversing attrition from civil and environmental engineering is a critical need for addressing society's grand challenges effectively. This attrition is due in part to limited discipline-focused engagement until students' junior year. To address this, the School of CEE is providing early engagement in authentic engineering experiences and giving students the opportunity to reflect on these experiences to solidify their CEE identity. We are creating opportunities early and across the curriculum for our students to engage in interactive problembased learning centered on the global grand challenges, while developing their technical and computational knowledge, skills, and mindset. We are also equipping our students to work effectively in teams and to apply story-driven learning to become more reflective learners. This takes the form of a "spine" of vertically-integrated courses. These innovations in the curriculum contribute to the development of holistic engineers with an enhanced sense of belonging to the discipline and a strengthened self-concept as a civil or environmental engineer. The initiative also supports the development of entrepreneurially minded engineers, that is, engineers who know how to create value for society and do so habitually. We outline these innovations in each of the four vertically-integrated courses, while emphasizing the techniques applied and how they connect to create a cohesive curriculum that engages students as engineers from the first year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]