Intra-Disciplinary Integration in Civil Engineering Education: An Approach to Integrate the Various Civil Engineering Disciplines with the Use of a Design Studio Lab

Abstract

Typically, Civil Engineering education supplements an individual course lecture series with hands-on laboratory exercises. These laboratory exercises tend to deal solely with the material being addressed in the lectures for the particular course. Consequently, not only are these laboratories limited to one Civil Engineering sub-discipline but also limited to the material being taught in the specific course. The Civil Engineering Department at our Institute developed and implemented a Design Studio Lab (DSL) for use in the 2014-2015 school year. This experiential studio linked several of the Civil Engineering sub-disciplines in a series of two-two hour studios/labs and one lecture per week (three credits). Four Civil Engineering sub-disciplines participated in this experiential studio with the desired goals of; gaining additional knowledge in a specific Civil Engineering sub-discipline, performing experiments and exercises in a sequence that illustrate the multi-discipline interaction that typically occur on Civil Engineering projects, developing a better understanding of the role of each sub-discipline in the practice of Civil Engineering and emphasizing the need for communication, collaboration and cooperation between Civil Engineering sub-disciplines. This paper addresses the desired student objectives and an assessment of the achievement of these objectives. The successes of this course are discussed as well as the “lessons learned” from the first semester. The experiential studio/laboratories are based on a known site and building. At the start of the design studio lab, the students are presented with the project information such as drawings, soil borings, and digital files. The faculty has the license to add underground tanks, contaminated soil and other Civil Engineering issues to the project data. The set-up of the design studio lab allows for significant change from semester to semester. Several of the intra (sub)-discipline experiential laboratories are discussed in the paper. As an example, the structural group interface with the geotechnical group in the development of building foundation loads, the performance of laboratory tests on the site soil to estimate differential settlement of the foundation and the input of this data into structural analysis software to determine the effect on the structural support moment frame. The results of the experiments/labs are captured in lab reports, papers and presentations. This design studio/lab is a prelude for a second more independent experiential studio which in turn leads to the comprehensive Capstone Design Course.