2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Stories have been, and always will be, powerful tools to inspire humans. For thousands of years, people relied upon the use of stories to pass along history and culture from generation to generation. Yet, with the development of formal education in the last couple centuries, stories seemed to have been removed from learning and instead, content and knowledge has been centered in the classroom. This can equate to the dull presentation of facts, figures, and formulas, stripped of any relationship to the world, let alone to the imagination.

In a period of time where the world seeks engineering innovation, common teaching practices seem to stifle creativity in the classroom. Professional organizations like ASCE emphasize that civil engineering programs need to prepare their graduates to face unique problems in the workforce that will require innovative solutions [1-3]. However, these same students likely spent a number of years not exercising this creativity.

The following paper documents a work in progress on the creation and implementation of a dramatic story plot within the technical content of an undergraduate reinforced concrete design course. The final goal is to reimagine the undergraduate engineering course experience- transporting it from a series of lectures on distinct topics to an integrated story plot. The new format would weave technical and historical content with a fictional story plot to keep students engaged as if they were reading a novel. Students also need to attend class and complete tasks/activities to follow all parts of the storyline, almost gamifying some of the content to encourage students to complete the necessary technical work.

Some specific activities and thematic elements will be highlighted, providing other instructors with a guide to including similar activities in their courses. Student survey data will be presented along with relevant assessment data. Through story-telling and student feedback, readers will be transported to a new universe of learning with the goal of igniting their own creativity to inspire innovative solutions for their respective classrooms.