RECONSTRUCT

Forensic Structural Engineering database for HEI and pilot course with innovative and interactive learning methods

Following the shift from traditional didactic classroom models to the adoption of more learner-centered active learning approaches, gamification and, especially, escape rooms are gaining popularity as alternative learning and assessment environments designed to enhance students’ learning and skills in primary, secondary, higher education, and professional development programs. An educational escape room can be defined as an instructional method requiring learners to participate in collaborative playful activities explicitly designed for domain knowledge acquisition, skill development or behavioral change so that they can accomplish a specific goal by solving puzzles linked to unambiguous learning objectives (in a limited amount of time). Research indicates that, due to their playful nature, which favoring positive behavior, educational escape rooms can enhance learners’ motivation, engagement, and time management, increase confidence in critical thinking and decision-making, improve knowledge acquisition and academic performance. The project aims at addressing:

  • The application of educational Escape Rooms in civil engineering, especially for training/continuing education in highly specialized courses on the subject of recursive damage identification to close the gap in the education of the civil engineers related to the forensic engineering.
  • Offering a new teaching methodology and introducing new contents for Master's programmes maintaining its topicality and generality but adding training in a highly specialized and demanded education field. Specifically, studies on cases that are directly derived from reported and investigated damage events will strongly support intersectoral (academia/non-academic sector) acceptance.
  • Improving the trustworthiness of forensic investigation and the reliability/ validity of the outcomes through an innovative /integrated international collaborative educational framework for the exchange of experiences between partners (literature and best practices), stakeholders and young researchers/ professionals.
  • Creating new, innovative and joint courses / International relations and development cooperation / New learning and teaching methods and approaches: The development and implementation of a Pilot Course in Forensic Structural Engineering will challenge students in various real-life cases of damaging events by means of evidence-based and problem-based approach. It aims at providing the network framework for cooperation, course/ curriculum set-up in an international environment with various engineering/ education backgrounds of participants in a specific case-oriented context.

The partners bring in different expertise and case studies suited to derive learning examples, thus the project consortium will cover a broad range of forensic cases finally triggered by wind, fire, earthquake and other at the beginning unknown events. The partners plan to take advantage of group diversity to find the best strategy for the problem at hand by using an AGILE approach with focus on the derivation of learning examples. Within the planned pilot course, each partner country will present a series of Lessons Learned and Best practices collected from their research and consultancy work (share of workload; establishment of transnational lectures and exercises). Key teaching materials and the educational escape rooms will be offered in local languages of the project partners to ensure a broad regional, national and European dissemination by the end of the project. Thus, the project generates an added value for all partners and Europe.

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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the German Academic Exchange Service. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.