2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper is a Work In Progress (WIP) Evidence-based Practice submission describing hands-on geotechnical and structural engineering modules designed for first-year civil engineering students. There is a need for hands-on modules that connect civil engineering concepts to interactive classroom activities in civil engineering first year courses. An effective module should engage students, teach fundamentals and clarify unclear questions for students. Geotechnical and Structural Engineering are two of the important subdivisions of civil engineering careers.

This paper focuses on presenting some hands-on geotechnical and structural engineering modules for first year engineering courses. These modules include, Construction of Shallow Foundation and Bearing Capacity, Demonstration of Eccentric Loading on Shallow Foundation, Pile Driving and Load Transfer, Design and Build of a Seismograph to record the Ground Movement and Building and Loading Model Structures to Compare with Sketched Predictions of Deflected Shapes. All these modules have been practiced by the authors in the upper-level elective courses such as Foundation Engineering, Dynamics of Structures, and Structural Analysis. In this paper the modules are simplified for use in the first-year engineering courses.

Construction of Shallow Foundation and Bearing Capacity and Pile Driving and Load Transfer are mainly demonstration modules while Demonstration of Eccentric Loading on Shallow Foundation, Design and Build of a Seismograph to record the Ground Movement and Building and Loading Model Structures to Compare with Sketched Predictions of Deflected Shapes are activities that involved students to be divided into groups of 4 -5. Each module was presented to a class of 15 to 25 students. Students mentioned in their course evaluations that the modules were one of the effective teaching sections of the class.