An example of teaching slope stability from true case hisrories: Three year experience

Abstract

Part of the information summarized in this paper has already been published (Lo Presti 2013). The context (Study Course, Subject) within which the case history has been used and the case history itself has already been described. Such details are reported for a full understanding. Anyway the present paper mainly evaluates the effectiveness of using such a case history after an experience of three years. The use of case histories in classroom mainly involves an inductive teaching approach. This paper discusses the intrinsic advantages and possible drawbacks of such an inductive approach in the light of three year experience. More specifically, the paper illustrates an example of teaching the class of “slope stability” based on such methodology. The experience took place at the University of Pisa in the second tier degree of Civil Engineering of Infrastructures in 2010 and covered three academic years. The inductive teaching approach is very popular in the British/American Higher Education system. On the contrary it is not so popular in Latin countries like Italy. In order to make more clear the comprehension of this paper to the potential readers, information on the Higher Education system in Europe and specifically in Italy is also given.