An association between students' learn-online engagement and academic performance was investigated for a third-year Water Resources Systems Design course at the University of South Australia in 2017. As the patterns of data were non-parametric, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were performed using SPSS. It was revealed from the test results…

Background: Computer-aided learning management systems (LMSs) are widely used in higher education and are viewed as beneficial when transitioning from conventional face-to-face teaching to fully online courses. While LMSs have unique tools for transferring and assessing knowledge, their ability to engage and assess learners needs further…

Engineering and construction industry workplace culture is known to undermine the mental health of workers and professionals, yet relatively little is known about the mental health of university students aiming to work in the industry. This is concerning, given evidence that students face increasing mental health risks in balancing study, work,…

This study seeks to explore whether a combination of traditional teaching methods with project-based learning (PBL) activities can improve the student learning experience in an engineering course of soil mechanics. As an alternative to the traditional type of assignment that consisted of several textbook problems, a project-based assignment was…

Collaboration is recognised as valuable in enhancing students' learning as well as their social integration and sense of belonging at an institution, which lead to higher retention rates. We investigate the informal, self-organised collaborative practices of military and civilian engineering students in out-of-class settings using a mixed-methods…

Environmental awareness and ethical moral reasoning are important aspects of the engineering profession. Yet, engineering programmes have been struggling to teach these topics and measure the effectiveness of these educational interventions. In this study, we tested the effectiveness of two independent measures of environmental awareness and moral…

This study uses a new approach to assign individual marks from a team mark using individual contributions to a teamwork product. A team member's contribution to a teamwork product, in the form of an individual weighting factor, is calculated using team members' co-assessment. A comparison of the proposed approach with existing methods has been…

The Threshold Concept Framework is used to initiate a dialogue on an empirically supported pedagogy that focuses on students' conceptual understanding required for solving application-based problems. The present paper uses a triangulation approach to identify the threshold concept in a third-year undergraduate civil engineering course on open…

Over the past few years many universities worldwide have introduced a common first year for all engineering disciplines. This is despite the opinion of many academics that large classes have negative effects on the learning outcomes of first year students. The University of South Australia is also faced with low motivation amongst engineering…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore the rationale for teaching sustainability and engineering ethics within a decision-making paradigm, and critically appraise ways of achieving related learning outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents the experience of the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney in…

This paper reports the development of innovative assessment sessions within two core technical courses in Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland. Peer Assessment Learning Sessions (PALS) facilitate a student's peer assessment of a colleague's problem-based learning assignment or tutorial within a "traditional" whole-class…

A library instruction program has been instituted in civil engineering at the Queensland University of Technology (Australia) in an effort to improve the research skills of fourth year students working on research projects. Students with extended library instruction were found to have better information-seeking behavior than others. (Author/MSE)

Australian civil engineers were surveyed for a study intended to establish a model for development based on a list of the basic stock of knowledge and techniques that need to be mastered by the graduate civil engineer. Following a brief introduction and summary, chapters 3-7 review the survey objectives, civil engineering definitions and…