KINGSTON – Two civil engineering professors at the University of Rhode Island are using a $148,462 National Science Foundation grant to try a new approach to laboratory-based instruction in which students not only have to complete a series of increasingly complex scientific experiments, but they have to design the experiments themselves.
Working in collaboration with an external evaluator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professors Mayrai Gindy and George Tsiatas are designing structural engineering learning materials and content modules to resemble real-world situations.
“This laboratory introduces engineering students to a completely new way of approaching experiments through discovery-based learning,” Gindy said.
Faculty partners from Rutgers University and the University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth will also be testing the curriculum in their classrooms.
