2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the way engineering education is designed, delivered, and experienced. Regarding engineering education, AI has strong potential to become a powerful partner that empowers both instructors and students. For instructors, AI can support curriculum design, optimize class activities, and provide data-driven insights for continuous improvement. For students, AI offers personalized guidance, computational support, and opportunities for deeper conceptual understanding when appropriately supervised by engineering principles.
This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of an AI-supported, hands-on learning activity integrated into an undergraduate Reinforced Concrete Design course. The activity aims to strengthen students’ understanding of flexural and shear behavior in reinforced concrete (RC) beams through three-point bending beam tests, where students observe cracking progression, deflection behavior, and ultimate failure in beams with different reinforcement configurations—under-reinforced, over-reinforced, and shear-failure types. Building upon an experiment successfully conducted in previous semesters, the AI-enhanced version enables instructors to refine and personalize the project setup based on students’ backgrounds, prior performance, and feedback collected from surveys, quizzes, and exam results.
Students are encouraged to explore three complementary learning strategies: (1) using AI independently without theoretical verification, (2) relying solely on theoretical analysis, and (3) applying AI under the supervision of theoretical knowledge. They compare predicted cracking and ultimate loads from each approach with experimental results and synthesize their findings in comprehensive reports. The project demonstrates that AI can effectively enhance both instructional improvement and student learning, while conveying an essential message: AI without theoretical understanding can be misleading, but AI guided by professional engineering knowledge becomes a powerful and reliable learning partner.