Establishment of Computational Thinking in the Interdisciplinary Education of Offshore Foundation Engineering

Establishment of Computational Thinking in the Interdisciplinary Education of Offshore Foundation Engineering

To bridge the gap between learning and practice, the Ministry of Education of Taiwan has proposed educational thinking of ''connecting compulsory courses with real engineering problems'' to promote the New Engineering Education Method Experiment and Construction (NEEMEC) program. The offshore wind energy industry has rapidly developed in Taiwan, and this study intends to acquaint students with this industry. Because one requirement of the NEEMEC program is to develop new course handouts, the authors have taken practical engineering problems, multidisciplinary knowledge integration, and numerical software applications as the key elements for producing new handouts. The research plan was implemented by following the ''conceive, design, implement, and operate'' education framework and project-based learning; furthermore, the concept of computational science and engineering was leveraged to equip students with computational thinking skills. In this study, practical engineering problems were combined with the three compulsory courses in the Department of Civil Engineering: Engineering Mathematics, Soil Mechanics, and Foundation Engineering. In addition, students were guided to verify theories and present their calculation results by coding and conducting numerical simulation. In this plan, graduate students were trained to become teaching assistants to help university students comprehend the content of handouts, solve calculation exercises, and program code required for their homework projects, as well as take students to off-campus field engineering visits. Finally, this study also used the learning results and feedback of students as references for future pedagogical practices.