DEVELOPMENT OF HANDS-ON EXPERIMENTATION EXPERIENCE FOR CIVIL ENGINEERING DESIGN COURSES AT SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY

摘要

This project will describe the revision of structural design courses, such as Reinforced Concrete Structures and Steel Structures, at San Francisco State University's School of Engineering, a major undergraduate degree granting institution. Development of hands-on experience for design courses originated with and was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation to set up an integrated undergraduate structural engineering laboratory. It aims to help students maximizing learning through hands-on experimentation, which will allow them to experimentally verify the theoretical and conceptual content of design courses. The goal is to motivate students to develop an understanding of why design specifications are written to avoid detrimental structural behaviors, through witnessing and verifying possible failure modes of structures. Implementation of a testing frame will significantly improve our undergraduate civil engineering curriculum, encourage student interaction, induce more commitment to learning, foster student curiosity, cultivate student creativity and bridge student connectivity between theoretical concepts and hands-on experience.