2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This research focuses on the experiences of graduate-level civil engineering students from a co-taught class who partnered with undergraduate architecture students in a collaborative design project. The graduate-level Structural Systems course was co-taught by a structural engineering professor and an architecture professor, who provided insight into the perspectives and methodologies of the two disciplines. Five graduate structural engineering students were in the course. The architecture professor was contemporaneously teaching a third-year undergraduate architecture studio. The architecture students spent the semester designing a Social Creative Resource Center (SCRC) and were in the final design phase during the last six weeks of the semester. It was at this stage that each engineering student was paired with an assigned architecture student to participate in an interdisciplinary collaborative project-based learning experience. The engineering student served as a consultant to the architecture student, helping to resolve structural aspects of the design, while being mindful of their partner’s architectural vision. The engineering students had to justify their recommendations to the architecture students and to the final architecture studio review panel.

The engineering students were required to fill out surveys and write a report detailing their recommendations, reasoning, and any resulting changes their partner made to the SCRC. A qualitative thematic analysis was conducted on these surveys and reports to explore how the engineering students characterized their engagement with the project. Co-teaching surveys were given to the co-instructors. The qualitative and quantitative analyses provided insights into their co-teaching experiences. This report discusses the themes relevant to the Structural Systems course. The research questions were:
1. How did the engineering students describe their experiences advising their partner?
2. What are the characteristics of the engineering students’ final written project reports?
3. How did the instructors describe aspects of their co-teaching?

The analysis of the student surveys revealed five themes: Student Needs and Knowledge Gained; Communication and Empathy; Recommendations from Engineering Students to Partner; Perspectives on Project Rubric; Professor Guidance. The first three of these themes were also identified in the students’ reports. The co-teaching survey highlighted the instructors’ perspectives on effective co-teaching elements: classroom applications, relationships, communication, planning and knowledge base for co-teaching. Relationships were identified as vital. The thematic study exposed the benefits of the non-traditional format of this graduate course from the perspectives of the co-instructors and the engineering students. It also provided guidance for improving future iterations of this course offering; such suggestions will be presented. A future study obtaining perspectives from the architecture students is necessary.