An Alternate Learning Approach for Destructive Testing in Civil
Engineering
Benefits from Remote Laboratory Experimentation
Xuemei Liu, Nannan Zong and Manicka Dhanasekar
School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment, Queensland University of Technology,
2 George St, Brisbane, QLD, 4001, Australia
Keywords: Alternative Learning Approach, Destructive Testing, Civil Engineering Education, Remote Laboratory
Experimentation.
Abstract: An alternative learning approach for destructive testing of structural specimens in civil engineering is
explored by using a remote laboratory experimentation method. The remote laboratory approach focuses on
overcoming the constraints in the hands-on experimentation without compromising the understanding of the
students on the concepts and mechanics of reinforced concrete structures. The goal of this study is to
evaluate whether or not the remote laboratory experimentation approach can become a standard in civil
engineering teaching. The teaching activity using remote-laboratory experimentation is presented here and
the outcomes of this activity are outlined. The experience and feedback gathered from this study are used to
improve the remote-laboratory experimentation approach in future years to other aspects of civil
engineering where destructive testing is essential.
1 INTRODUCTION
Civil engineering is a practical discipline which
applies scientific and mathematical principles in a
socially responsible manner to design, construct, and
operate infrastructures and building systems. The
overall goal of the civil engineering education is to
prepare students for the profession to get solutions
for the practical problems. To do this successfully,
civil engineers must have the knowledge that is
traditionally gained in the educational laboratories
(Feisel and Rosa, 2005).
Laboratory based courses play a critical role in
engineering education. Nersessian (1991) claims that
“hands-on experience is at the heart of science
learning” and Clough (2002) declares that laboratory
experiences “make science come alive”. Lab courses
have a strong impact on students’ learning outcomes,
according to Magin et al., (1986). Instructional
laboratories have been implemented for engineering
education from the early days. The traditional one is
known as hands-on laboratory with real instruments.
Feisel and Rosa (2005) summarised the fundamental
objectives of the engineering teaching laboratories,
which can be used as a guide for engineering
educators to develop and improve the effectiveness
of laboratory learning experiences. There are three
types of educational laboratories in engineering
education (Ma and Nickerson, 2006). These include
hands-on laboratory, simulated or virtual laboratory,
and remote or distributed learning laboratory
(Krivickas and Krivickas, 2007).
Remote/ virtual laboratories are currently being
developed and used in many places around the world
in areas that do not require destructive testing. There
have been debates over the introduction of remote/
virtual versus hands-on laboratories in engineering
education. Hands-on laboratory allows students to
directly see, hear, touch, and feel the devices and the
experimental specimens. Whilst in the virtual
laboratory students learn engineering principles
through simulation running on computers without
any real element of equipment or specimens. In the
remote laboratory, students interact with the real
devices/ equipment/ specimens remotely through a
computer user interface. Therefore, the remote
laboratories are called as the “Second Best of Being
There” by Aktan (1996). However, with the rapid
advancement in technologies, even hands-on
laboratory utilises more and more computers and
technical devices and controllers which blurs the
275
Liu X., Zong N. and Dhanasekar M..
An Alternate Learning Approach for Destructive Testing in Civil Engineering - Benefits from Remote Laboratory Experimentation.
DOI: 10.5220/0004945002750279
In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2014), pages 275-279
ISBN: 978-989-758-021-5
Copyright
c
2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
hands-on and the remote laboratory learning
experiences.
There is still a shortage of data on whether new
technologies such as remote laboratory
experimentation are as effective as hands-on
laboratory when it comes to teaching design skills
involving destructive testing of materials/ structural
members. The effectiveness of the remote-laboratory
compared with traditional hands-on laboratory
practice is seldom explored. Therefore, this paper
will discuss the effectiveness of the remote
laboratory experimentation for civil engineering
undergraduates through an analysis of the students’
feedback based on a remote-laboratory project. The
main target is to promote an effective use of
alternative learning approach for undergraduate
learning civil engineering.
2 REMOTE LABORATORY
EXPERIMENTATION
An year 2 undergraduate subject, ENB 276
Structural Engineering-I, that aims at introducing the
analysis of simple statically indeterminate structures,
pattern loadings in structural design and the
behaviour and design of reinforced concrete beams,
slabs, and columns is used for the introduction of
remote lab testing. Laboratory practice is an
important element for this unit. Historically hands-
on laboratory practices were implemented for
students to design and construct reinforced concrete
beams and test them to failure within the on-campus
laboratory. In those days, the student number was
around 90. With the relocation of the on-campus
laboratory to a new campus in a remote suburb, the
hands-on laboratory practices become less efficient
for a cohort with a large number of students (398
enrolments). In order to enable the students to
experience what they would do for the hands-on
experiment in the laboratory, a remote laboratory
project was developed as explained in this paper.
2.1 Background
The idea was that the students design their own
beams in a team of 4-5 members of their choice. The
criteria (capacity of the testing machine and space
allowance) of the design were explicitly stated in the
design brief. Basically, one beam was designed for
bending failure and the other for shear failure. Two
beams among all the designed beams were then
selected as the test specimens for the remote
laboratory experimentation.
The reinforced concrete beams were prepared by
tutors and technicians. The whole preparation
process from formwork preparation, steel bar
bending, placement and positioning, concrete
materials proportioning, mixing, and lastly the
casting of concrete beams were all video recorded
and played in the lecture theatre before the remote
laboratory testing. At the time of testing, the
students sitting inside the lecture room could
remotely control the testing machine through an
internet protocol (IP) and observe the whole testing
procedure through the live streaming of an IP
camera, while technicians in the laboratory are
supervising the whole testing process in case of
hazard events happening and having real-time
communication with the students remotely through
another camera. The detailed test setup is narrated in
the following section.
At the end of the semester, after the final
examination and declaration of result, the students
were surveyed on different aspects of the influence
of the remote laboratory experimentation on their
learning experience and outcomes through a
voluntary online questionnaire system. The
feedbacks based on a respondent number of 53 (out
of 398, or 13.3%) are used in the analysis of the
effectiveness in the learning experience and learning
outcomes by using remote laboratory
experimentation in civil engineering education. The
low response rate is typical at Queensland
University of Technology as the students are
surveyed (response is voluntary) for each subject in
each semester by a university wide system known as
“Reframe”. Further the questionnaire from this unit
was personally carried out using blackboard system.
2.2 Remote Laboratory Setup
The overall remote laboratory setup is presented in
Figure 1 schematically. The students sitting inside
the lecture room remotely operated the controller of
the actuator that applied loading on the test
specimen in the laboratory. The remotely controled
panel image was projected onto Projector 1 in the
lecture theatre. Meanwhile, performed testing was
captured by an IP camera, the live streaming images
were used to feedback to the lecture theatre (PC3),
and projected onto Projector 2. In addition, the
mutual communication was established in parallel
between the students in the lecture theatre and the
staffs in the laboratory through the use of Skype for
cost-effectiveness. This is to make sure the
information from both sides can be instantly
exchanged and the whole process can be conducted
CSEDU2014-6thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation
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Figure 1: Schematic setup of the remote laboratory experimentation.
seamlessly and safely.
The lecture theatre was quite full on the day of
remote testing with approximately 90% attendance
and keen participation; in contrast during theory
lectures attendance varied between just 60% - 75%.
2.3 The Benefits of Remote Laboratory
2.3.1 The Effectiveness of Video Casting in
Learning Outcomes
The first part of the remote laboratory project
involved the learning experience using webcast
video. The video directly presents proportioning of
materials for concrete, mixing and construction of
beams. The benefits of the project in mix
proportioning and mixing concrete by using the
webcast video is shown in Table 1.
Table 1: The benefits of remote laboratory in mix
proportioning and mixing concrete.
Benefits Response
I know how to do mix proportioning 13%
I know how to mix concrete 4%
I know both 79%
None 4%
In the result, not surprisingly, the students
benefitted a lot from the webcast video in extending
their understanding of the mix proportioning and
mixing of concrete. 79% of students responded that
they have now known both mix proportioning and
the mixing process of concrete. While 13% of them
only knew how to do the mix proportioning and 4%
of them only knew the mix procedure of concrete
mixing. Although 4% of the students still admitted
that they knew nothing about the mix proportioning
and mix procedure of concrete, the benefits of the
video cast are imminent for improvement of student
learning outcomes.
2.3.2 The Outcomes of Remote Laboratory
Learning
The benefits of designing reinforced concrete
members as part of the remote laboratory
experimentation for the students are summarised in
Table 2 based on the feedback. It should be
reminded that the remote laboratory only involved
the design and testing of reinforced concrete beams.
In the feedback, 88% of the students admitted that
they have benefited from this project in designing
the reinforced concrete beams in comparison to
other reinforced concrete members (such as slabs)
columns and slabs which were not covered in the
remote laboratory project. This could therefore be
inferred that the remote project greatly and directly
has strengthend students’ understanding and
AnAlternateLearningApproachforDestructiveTestinginCivilEngineering-BenefitsfromRemoteLaboratory
Experimentation
277
impression of designing concrete beams. As other
structural elements have not been tested, students
found the behaviour of those elements more
challenging. The results could be improved if the
students not only design their specimen but also
make the specimens by themselves, unfortunately it
was difficult to involve students in preparing
specimens due to time and space constraints.
Negative data from 4% of them came with explicit
statement of them not getting benefits in either
designing or testing of any of the reinforced concrete
members, namely, beams, slabs, or even columns as
presented in Table 2.
Table 2: The benefits in designing reinforced concrete
members.
Benefits Response
Beams 88%
Slabs 6%
Columns 2%
None 4%
The two reinforced concrete beams with different
reinforcement arrangement providing two different
failure modes – bending and shear - were purposely
planned to help students understand the differences
between these two failure modes of reinforced
concrete beams. 87% of the students strongly agreed
that they have clearly understood these two different
failure modes. About 12% students got some
benefits in understanding of the failure modes of the
reinforced concrete beams. While only 2% thought
that they did not get any benefits regarding the
failure modes of the reinforced concrete beams from
the remote laboratory experimentation. As shear
failure is more brittle, it is good to know a high
majority of students could differentiate the two
(flexure and shear) failure modes.
Table 3: The benefits in clearly understanding the different
failure modes of the reinforced concrete beams.
Benefits Response
Yes, absolutely. 87%
A bit 12%
Not at all 2%
2.3.3 The Benefits of Remote Laboratory in
Comparison to Hands-on Experiment
Regarding to the general benefits from the remote
laboratory experimentation to the students learning
experiences, they gave different opinions. About
65% of the students agreed that the remote
laboratory experimentation improved the learning
outcomes of the engineering study. 50% of them
thought that the remote laboratory experimentation
will benefit them in implementing new technologies
into their study and work. 44% of the students
believed that this project benefited them in working
as a team. About a quarter of them (29%) believed
that this remote laboratory experimentation project
improved their skills in organising reports. The
results are shown in Table 4.
Table 4: The benefits of remote laboratory
experimentation for engineering education.
Benefits Response
Working as a team 44%
Organizing reports 29%
Implementing new technology into study
and work
50%
Improving learning outcomes of
engineering study
65%
3 CONCLUSIONS
The remote laboratory experimentation has not been
often utilised for education in civil engineering
design units involving destructive testing of material
and structural specimens. Although the most
desirable option is “hands-on” experimentation, with
relocation of heavy structural labs away from city
campus into suburbs and with very large cohorts, it
becomes not possible to offer the hands-on approach;
therefore, remote-lab is the most feasible option.
There is no evidence of utilising this approach for
experiments involving destruction of material and
structural specimens. The information provided in
the paper can therefore be considered as first of its
kind for destructive testing of RC beams.
A case study for teaching structural engineering
(Reinforced concrete design) that involved both
video casting and remote laboratory
experimentations is presented. The remote
laboratory experimentation involved team-based
design of reinforced concrete beams subjected to
different failure modes, construction of the beams,
and testing by using the remote-laboratory setup.
The feedback on the understanding and the learning
experience and learning outcomes are also presented.
This feedback allowed to assess how well students
benefitted and made use of the project, the video
casting, and the remote laboratory experimentation.
It is concluded that the remote laboratory
experimentation is an effective method for teaching
and learning of subjects involving reinforced
concrete design, where destruction of concrete
cylinders and reinforced concrete beams are
unavoidable. It creates an alternative learning
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approach for the students by implementing new
technologies. The use of webcast video and remote
laboratory experimentation allows comprehensive
learning of the structural engineering basics,
construction of reinforced concrete beams and
understanding of the failure modes (bending or
shear). The effectiveness of the remote laboratory
experimentation was confirmed by the students’
positive feedback from the case study described in
this paper.
In addition, the students’ feedback will help us to
shape the future teaching to further improve the
teaching and learning experience of civil
engineering education.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors acknowledge the support from Frank De
Bruyne, technical manager of Banyo Pilot Plant
Precinct (PPP), Queensland University of
Technology. The assistance of several graduate
students and technician, especially Sebastian
Schundau and Shahid Nazir, is gratefully
acknowledged.
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