Visual, interactive learning applications for self-motivated learning in structural concrete

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In this project new visual, interactive course material (complementing the existing lecture notes) for the «Structural Concrete I/II» courses of the D-BAUG Civil Engineering Bachelor programme is developed.
The main objective of the project consists in fostering the students› self-driven learning motivation and thereby enhancing their understanding of the mechanical behaviour of structural concrete, such that they will be prepared for the present and, in particular, future challenges in research and industry.
Currently, these courses are taught with a rather traditional approach of frontal lecturing for the entire class and guided exercises and colloquia, complemented by a couple of site visits during each year. While receiving good evaluations, this teaching approach is limited when it comes to enhancing the students› self-driven learning motivation. Therefore, their curiosity and critical thinking shall be fostered by additional, innovative course material allowing an interactive, exciting approach to the theoretical concepts. To this end, virtual experiments, animations and selected physical models carried out during the lecture shall be created (as a surrogate for large-scale experiments as used in research, which would be unmanageable in teaching).
All new learning materials will be bilingual (German/English) and made available on an online platform. This can be used as a baseline for a possible future MOOC (where additional learning material and theory courses will have to be provided).

• In order to reach the goals of the project, the new, interactive course material must be appealing for today’s generation of «digital native» students, i.e. visually attractive and user friendly, such that the interactive application of theoretical knowledge and the self-driven effort of students can indeed be fostered.
• The existing course material, which will be complemented by the project’s output as new material, must be carefully adjusted in order to achieve a coherent and logical outline of the lecture and its curriculum.
• All members of the project team must be competent and highly motivated to achieve the project goals, and they must be familiar with the current course material.

The virtual experiments and animations prepared allow for a continuous tracking with real time visual representations during the entire process, rather than providing static visualisations of distinct stages of an experiment. This is most helpful in understanding the complex non-linear behaviour of structural concrete.

The implementation of the new interactive applications into the existing course material is paramount for an integral curriculum. Therefore, we will thoroughly revise the colloquia and exercises in the further steps.

We have conducted an evaluation among students after the first year of inauguration. The reception of the new teaching material was generally good and the technical quality was highly praised. Many students used the applications in the exam preparation, proving their potential in self-studying situations. However, the engagement during the semester was rather low mostly due to the lack of time, which shows the need for an adjustment of the exercises to more actively promote the use of the applications.

• It is worth spending enough time for the assessment of the ideal platform for the development of the web applications. It should be versatile to enable all required functionality and easy to adapt to ensure knowledge transfer along generations of developers and users.
• We had an intensive beta-test run within our research group with peer-reviewing of the applications to identify bugs and lack of clarity.

• E-Learning Plattform
• Learning and Teaching Fair 2020