Abstract:

Engineering and technical degrees are difficult to teach and, consequently, have always been characterized by a large number of academic failures. That is the reason why different methodologies have been applied in different countries [1]. Amongst these methodologies, we should mention audio/visual resources as a useful tool to improve the teaching of coastal engineering [2], which meant more students that pass the courses [3]. Nevertheless, nothing has been found about the use of “rules of thumb” as a way for students to improve their comprehension of basic engineering concepts.

This paper shows the teaching experience on Maritime Engineering for undergraduate students of Civil Engineering in the School of Engineering at the University of Seville. The application of new information technologies in classrooms and advanced training in the use of finite element software tools and programming languages gives our students extremely powerful tools for solving very complex engineering problems with excellent results.

However, the enormous effort invested by the students in acquiring this advanced knowledge and to be up to date in using and commanding on these technologies leads them to focus their main efforts, just toward the numerical resolution of the problem, the efficiency of the implemented algorithm, and the programming language difficulties. This puts aside the critical sense of the accuracy of the results. The student doesn’t get the physical “feel“ of what’s happening in the algorithm.

We have included in our lesson programs a teaching sequence that always starts with a historical review of the different approaches used by the engineers who preceded us to solve problems from the 17th century to today. This method makes the student to appreciate the importance and wits required by those men in the past in facing a difficult task when they didn’t have a PC or powerful software.
The “rules of thumb” in engineering become a powerful tool for the digital native students which help them make sense the programming when they finally find out that the algorithm responds with reasonable accuracy to the result expected beforehand. Some examples will be given in this paper in order to show the use of these “rules of thumb” or simplified models in class for teaching Maritime Engineering subject. Among them: the Iribarren wave`s drawings, the USACE Shore Protection Manual Graphs, the dimensionless stability number of Vicente Negro [4] for the design of the armour layer blocks in breakwaters, the Iribarren deterministic unsurpassable criteria for dikes, etc.

References:
[1] Neves M.G., Fontul S., Miguez M., Solari S., Muñoz J.J. (2015). Methodologies for teaching an engineering subject in different countries: comparison and results. INTED2015 Proc., pp. 1339-1346
[2] Lopez-García P., Navarro-Pons M., Muñoz-Perez J.J., Anfuso G. (2014). Audiovisual resources as a useful tool to improve the teaching of coastal engineering (Marine Science BSc degree). EDULEARN14 Proc., pp. 6117-6124
[3] Navarro-Pons M., Moreno L., Muñoz-Perez J.J., Anfuso G. & Roman-Sierra J. (2014). Success on increasing number of students that pass the coastal engineering subject. EDULEARN14 Proc., pp.4443-4448
[4] Negro V., Varela O. (2008) Diseño de diques rompeolas. Ed. Colegio de ICCP, Seinor n.28, 420 pp

Keywords:

Rules of thumb, innovation, coastal engineering teaching, born digital.