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Many fundamental mechanics concepts are critical to success in upper-level courses in traditional civil engineering curriculum. To evaluate retention of mechanics concepts and encourage review of the material, a mechanics diagnostic exam has been administered to civil engineering students at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point since 2018. The exam is administered to junior and senior students at the start of the fall semester. It was designed as a no-stakes assessment tool to identify common errors in students' comprehension of foundational engineering mechanics concepts. The diagnostic exams consisted of ten mechanics calculationbased problems including topics of truss analysis, indeterminate static equilibrium, and combined loading. For each problem, students were asked to rate their confidence in their solution and estimate the time spent on each problem. The purpose of administering these exams was two-fold: (1) provide longitudinal assessment data to inform changes made to mechanics courses in the civil engineering program and (2) provide self-assessment for students to identify areas of weakness before being required to apply the concepts in follow-on courses or on the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam. In addition to summarizing quantitative performance on the exam, the confidence and time spent on each problem were analyzed to identify trends. Completed exams were also reviewed to identify common errors made on each problem. This paper summarizes those common errors for mechanics concepts included in the exam. Errors were categorized as conceptual, non-conceptual, or execution errors. Recommendations are provided for instructors to address these common errors during future delivery of the course material. Some of the errors identified suggest misconceptions; a future research project will be designed to help identify why some misconceptions may exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States Military Academy (USMA) seeks to educate and inspire their civil engineering students through a rigorous and realistic academic program. One of the introductory courses in the civil engineering program is a broad-based infrastructure engineering course that incorporates multiple engineering disciplines. The course exposes students to foundational concepts like landfill operations, conventional water treatment methods, electrical transmission and distribution, and traffic flow theory, while being adaptable enough to field more contemporary issues as well. A recent contemporary issue addressed in the course is sustainability in design, one of the newest curriculum criteria established by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) for civil engineering programs. The purpose of this paper is to propose a way of integrating and assessing the new ABET civil engineering program curriculum criteria of sustainability in design, specifically through the assessment of a project-based learning experience in an infrastructure engineering course. The project consists of an investigation and assessment of a proposed site with existing infrastructure as a potential base of operations in the aftermath of a catastrophic event. This paper outlines the scope of the culminating project, which includes a summary of the students' findings via an executive summary, briefing, and oral exam. A threefold assessment is presented with respect to the course objectives, department mission to educate and inspire, and the civil engineering program student outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing consensus that our students need to build a different set of skills during their college experience than was necessary in decades past. In addition to technical knowledge, graduates of engineering programs must enter the workforce inspired and able to engage in design activities, creatively solving problems, learning on their own, and comfortably navigating the information-rich environment we live and work in. There is also a growing body of knowledge concerning how to most effectively teach modern students - highlighting the value of student-centered learning, active learning experiences, and effective integration of technology. After an internal assessment, the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the US Military Academy determined that the initial sequence of mechanics courses provided the technical content our students needed but required updating in some important ways. First, mechanics was being taught isolated from the broader design process. Secondly, there was no integration of computer programs to begin the education of our students on their effective use (and understanding their limitations). Finally, students were largely asked to demonstrate that they could repeat a calculation they had seen worked in class rather than creating or discovering their own solutions, failing to provide the time, space and inspirational structure necessary for students to apply their knowledge in a way that demonstrates a broader understanding. For these reasons, the department conducted a radical overhaul of two courses: MC300 (Fundamentals of Engineering Mechanics and Design, which combines statics and introductory mechanics topics) and MC364 (Mechanics of Materials). The rethinking of these courses included many hands-on learning activities in place of instructor demonstrations, specifically designed to inspire the students to engage with acquiring the knowledge they need rather than waiting for it to be ladled into their brains. Many of these were designed to lead to student discovery of mechanics principles. The courses now also integrate computer aided design software to begin teaching students how to effectively use these powerful resources. Including CAD software was also intended to assist in the development of engineering judgment through assignments that required students to investigate the effect of changing parameters, allowing them to see the results in a visually rich computer environment. This paper describes the assessment that led to the changes, provides an overview of the changes made, and reports initial assessment data related to the changes. Syllabii of the two courses are included along with explanations of hands-on learning activities and CAD implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that engineering judgment is critical to effective engineering practice, particularly when design thinking is required. As computer-aided design tools have made detailing far more automated, engineers are being asked to take on higher-level tasks earlier in their careers, necessitating the development of this judgment in undergraduates. This clearly has become a priority for many programs, as evidenced by the growth of project-based learning. Developing this type of judgment and creativity is challenging, but inquiry-based learning will play an important role and well-tested tools for inspiring new types of knowledge acquisition methods in our students are needed. This paper describes hands-on, inquiry-based learning activities that were recently designed and implemented in the first mechanics course taken by students in the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the US Military Academy in part to help accelerate the development of students' engineering judgment. These activities enabled and encouraged knowledge acquisition through personal effort which inspires deeper inquiry. This introductory course combines statics and mechanics of materials: the activities described in this paper address both foundational topics. Inspired by inquiry-based learning techniques, these activities are studentfocused rather than instructor-led activities and are somewhat open-ended. The first activity required students to assemble an engine hoist and use four basic scales and basic concepts in statics to determine the weight of an engine block. Students then predicted what would happen to the distribution of the weight as the location of the engine block moved along the engine hoist arm, reinforcing the concepts of reactions and moments of a force. Another activity used an aluminum load cell with longitudinal strain gages to weigh the engine block. This activity reinforced the concepts of stress, strain, and Hooke's law while exposing students to the world of instrumentation and data acquisition for the first time. In another activity, students were asked to predict strains occurring within a beam in bending - before the concepts and theories of bending had been introduced. Challenging their previous knowledge about axial strain, the linear strain distribution through the depth of a beam was discovered by the students measuring strains at various points through the beam's depth. Expanding this knowledge in a following lesson, students were required to predict strains on beams of equal cross-sectional area but different shapes (rectangle, square tube, and I-shape). These beams were loaded and strains were measured allowing students to observe the influence of moment of inertia on strain and, therefore, stress. Each of these activities was rich in what might be called "second order" learning, exploring topics (things like Wheatstone Bridges and analog-to-digital data conversion) well beyond the basic concepts and theory being taught. In addition to describing the activities in detail, this paper provides preliminary assessment data about the effect of the hands-on learning activities on specific learning objectives and more broadly within the context of developing judgment. Qualitative commentary on the use of these activities is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expectations of information technology skills continue to grow in the Civil Engineering profession, demanding that universities include the development of information technology knowledge in their vision and goals, and ABET outcomes and objectives. Since 2007, the Civil Engineering Program at the United States Military Academy has evolved their approach to integrating information technology into multiple courses across the program. In 2009, a comprehensive study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of this approach and three specific challenges were identified: limited faculty capacity to maintain pace with the information technologies, complexities and costs of the technologies, and difficulty of integrating the technologies across a program rather than a one-course exposure. In the following years, these challenges were addressed and teaching approach to information technology evolved to address these challenges. In 2011, a follow-up study was completed to assess the evolution and indentify future work to continue to evolve the approach. Specifically, it was reported that through the evolution and assessment it become readily apparent that there was a unique and strong relationship between learning styles and teaching/tutoring approaches. Although this is an obvious statement relative to all learning and teaching environments, the demands of teaching information technology across multiple domains of development (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor) made this connection even more critical. This paper will discuss the study of the learning styles considerations in teaching information technology and how teaching/tutoring approaches can best be developed to address student learning styles across multiple domains of development. Longitudinal assessment results will be compared to the 2009 and 2011 studies, along with other assessments. It is believed that these results, and the continued assessment of the teaching approach at this institution, will provide valuable insight to other programs to help them overcome the challenges of teaching information technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]