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Case study:
Multi-disciplinary Civil Engineering design (quarry)

Evaluation and reflection

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The project was established to enable students from different engineering disciplines to work together as a team on a topic of which they had no prior experience. They were expected to formulate their own questions and to seek out solutions.

The majority of team members were studying on the Civil and Structural Engineering MEng course. In the light of this, there was a disappointing level of structural content to the output report. The only significant structural input was to the loading jetty (Appendix 4 - pdf file).

The web availability (through the coursework briefing sheet) of input worked well. Students had access to OS map details scanned onto the website. Geological map details were also made available in the same way. Maps of the study area were made available to students on a local intranet web. Some of these were directly scanned from Ordnance Survey maps (with permission) and were digitally altered to simplify the project (i.e. parts of Rhos-on-Sea which were located over the proposed quarry site were simply erased).

Other maps were made available using Digimap. Although students could have individually registered for Digimap and downloaded required sections of maps for themselves, to save time and expedite the supervision of this new teaching module it was decided that only certain Digimap tiles would be made available and that these would be downloaded for the students and mounted on the web Coursework Briefing Sheet. In addition some Digimap tiles were made available. For future exercises of a similar type it is planned that students will register and access Digimap themselves.

Reflection:

The Quarry project in 2000/2001 was the first time a Multi-Disciplinary design project had been run in this manner, using a problem-based learning approach and taking advantage of the Digimap facility. It was new to the students and was also new to the supporting academic staff. It was inevitable that there would be a learning curve in adapting to this new approach and that the project would benefit in future years by reflective feedback from both students and staff.

The students have two formal opportunities to provide specific feedback input on the whole MEng course. Feedback meetings are held towards the end of both semesters, where an open and lively discussion usually takes place. Following the first feedback meeting there is the opportunity to make changes, where possible, to benefit these students for the remainder of their year. The second feedback meeting is obviously only of benefit to students in the following year, but is often the meeting that gives better and more balanced input as the students have an overview of the entire course by this time.

The timing of the Multi-Disciplinary Design project in the second semester only allows the opportunity for reflective feedback at the second feedback meeting.

Student reflection:

The second feedback meeting discussed various aspects of the whole MEng year. The Multi-Disciplinary design project was only a part of that year and the Digimap usage was only one part of the Multi-Disciplinary design project. Thus, there wasn't the time for an extensive feedback. Nevertheless, the following points were aired:

• The students reported back that they had enjoyed the quarry project. They had put a lot of time and effort into it and this was evidenced by the quality of their final reports.
• They all felt that the field visits to the two different types of quarry would have been more useful earlier on in the course. However the staff replied that these visits were deliberately timed halfway through the exercise to prevent the students from seeing just one solution to the problem and believing that this was the only possible solution and then replicating it.
• The students liked the web-based delivery of the project and the access to digital maps.
• They did not like the hard-scaling of some of the hardcopy maps scanned into the website. The fine detail of these meant it was difficult to retain an overview whilst studying detail. Printing out their own hardcopy was both expensive and time-consuming.
• Both groups chose to use the 3D visualisation package, Surfer, to show a 'before' and 'after' representation of the quarry site. Transferring data from the Digimap system to Surfer was cumbersome. The students manually superimposed a regular grid onto a hardcopy of the digital map. They then manually read off the height value at each grid point (interpolating between contour lines where necessary) and manually typed this information into the Surfer package. It was agreed that there should be a better way to link the two facilities.

Staff reflection:

Incorporating Digimap in the Multi-Disciplinary Design project was done at fairly short notice and as a result of this, it wasn't done in a manner that allowed the students to gain the most out of it. Notwithstanding this, it proved to be quite successful and will be incorporated into future Multi-Disciplinary Design projects. The following considerations were made immediately after the conclusion of the teaching exercise:

• Due to time constraints, it was decided not to allow the students to access the Digimap service themselves directly. Instead, a number of maps were downloaded and installed into the local website for them to access. This removed the obstacle of their registration and learning to use the Digimap facility. However it obviously restricted them to the constraints of the available maps and the options pre-selected for these maps.
• A means of accessing spot height data on a regular grid directly from Digimap and converting these data into a format suitable for input into Surfer was needed. After contact with the EDINA support staff, a solution to this particular problem was found and was given to the students in the following year.
• Copies of the Final Reports of both student teams were sent to the quarry managers of the two quarries visited. Both commented very favourably on the quality of the students' efforts. One of the managers returned these reports with extensive feedback as to the factual correctness and viability of their schemes. A short meeting was held with the students to discuss these points.
  

Changes to the learning objects:

Last updated: June 24, 2003