2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Work-In-Progress: What Goes into an Engineering Decision: An Infrastructure Decision-Making Game for Exploratory Equity Learning - Phase 4 Comparing Learning Formats

Presented at A Queen's Gambit: Developing Professional Skills for an Uncertain World

This paper presents the next phase of an ongoing effort to integrate consequence-based thinking into structural engineering education through game-based learning. Earlier phases of the project introduced an infrastructure decision-making game designed to engage students with tradeoffs among risk reduction, community impact, system performance, and equity during post-disaster recovery. Two versions, a board game and a computer-based version, were developed to facilitate learning about decision-making under uncertainty and resource constraints, with multiple competing objectives.

Phase 4 focuses on systematically comparing and evaluating the two game platforms while testing two pedagogical enhancements: (1) an instructional module introducing fundamental concepts of resilience and equity in infrastructure systems, and (2) in-game messages designed to prompt reflection on decision outcomes. The study employs a mixed-methods research design incorporating pre/post self-assessments, gameplay data analysis, and qualitative feedback to guide the investigation. The proposed module is implemented in an undergraduate introductory structural engineering course with approximately 100 students.

This phase aims to identify the distinctive strengths, limitations, and contextual advantages of each platform. The board game may better support teamwork and peer discussion, whereas the computer-based version enables scalable implementation and individualized reflection. By comparing how these environments shape learning experiences, the study seeks to clarify how different tools can be strategically used to advance consequence-oriented learning in undergraduate structural engineering curricula.

Authors

Prof. Eun Jeong Cha University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Eun Jeong Cha is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Dr. Cha holds a Ph.D. (2012) and a M.S. (2009) in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a B.S. (2006) in Architectural Engineering from Seoul National University, South Korea. Her awards and honors include the NSF Next Generation of Hazards and Disasters Researchers Fellowship in 2015 and the UIUC Office of Risk Management and Insurance Research Faculty Scholar in 2021. Her research interests are in the general areas of risk-based decision-making for civil infrastructures subjected to natural hazards, including climate adaptation, community resilience, life-cycle analysis, probabilistic hazard impact simulations for buildings and other infrastructure exposed to extreme events including earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods, and structural safety target optimization.
Abigail Louise Beck University of Houston [biography]

Abigail Beck is a Ph.D. Candidate in Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She received her M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and her B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research surrounds equity-based infrastructure decision support by integrating her fundamental specialization in structural reliability, risk assessment, systems modeling, and probabilistic methods with social science approaches. She is a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a 2023-2024 Mavis Future Faculty Fellow. She is a member of the NIST Center of Excellence for Community Resilience and collaborates with engineers, economists, social scientists, and planners on the development of tools to support community resilience decision-making. She has been recognized for her research at multiple international conferences with a Student Best Paper Award at ICOSSAR 2021/2022 and CERRA Student Recognition Award at ICASP 2023.
Luc Paquette University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
Eric G Shaffer [biography]

Eric Shaffer is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science. He teaches a revolving set of courses including Virtual Reality, Computer Graphics, and Scientific Visualization. In addition to teaching, he has done research in the

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

« View session