Abstract:

This paper reports on using Microsoft Excel coupled with Visual Basic for Application (VBA) in teaching two courses for the students in the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department in the United Arab Emirates University. The first course covers the use of the Stiffness Matrix Method for the analysis of 2D trusses, beams and frames. The latter has a more advanced content by focusing on 2D solid elements, plates and shells. Throughout offering of both courses, the authors guide students to develop different user-defined VBA functions to be used in Excel spreadsheets to derive the solution of different structural analysis problems. The paper also proposes a new method in Excel that may be used to eliminate possible cheating (e-cheating) when students exchange files using e-mail, Bluetooth or any other mean. The proposed method has been used successfully by the authors to minimize e-cheating and copying among students.

Keywords:

excel spreadsheet, teaching tools, macros, visual basic for application (vba).