Incorporating Woodwork Fabrication into the Integrated Teaching and Learning of Civil Engineering Students

As an alternative to the traditional structural analysis adopting computer-aided modeling and evaluation, this pedagogical research provided an integrated teaching and learning approach by mapping cognitive domains defined in Bloom’s Taxonomy Theory in the newly launched course named Woodwork Fabrication and Analysis for second-year students. The course incorporated ancient Chinese woodwork tradition into the integrated learning activities involving engineering graphics, mechanics of materials, hands-on fabrication, and structural modeling/analysis. Aiming to compare the traditional and new courses in terms of their effectiveness in enhancing student learning of structural engineering subjects, both courses were designed to achieve consistentlearning outcomes (e.g., to develop structural analysisskills). This study demonstrated student work in engineering drawing and structural analysisreflecting their critical thinking and active learning in the new course. Afterwards,studentsfrom both traditional and new courses were surveyedin terms of the overall satisfactionof their selected course, perceptions of the course effectiveness in enhancing civil engineering-related skills, and expectations of the course to their further studyand work.With the student sample from the traditional course as the control group,the comparative studyrevealed that the integrated teaching and learning approachin the new course could lead to students’ higher overall satisfaction and more positive perceptions of the course effectiveness in enhancing structural analysis-related skills. This pedagogical study would serve as a reference for other civil engineeringeducators in adopting integrated teaching and learning in lower-years’ undergraduate education.