This paper reports on implementations of active learning strategies carried out for the civil engineering courses. Specifically, the activities are performed by students in a computersimulated environment, in which they are assigned a role and follow a mission. As a consequence of the activity, the students prepare a product (a report, drawing, or other documents) and send it to a real tutor for evaluation. Because the simulation of the environment is the most expensive part of this class of development, a story-centered approach has been followed here, in which only part of the activities are represented in the module. This approach was originally proposed by R. C. Schank and has been adapted here for engineering education, in which formal modeling and calculations are part of the expected activities. Examples are used to illustrate the implemented activities, which refer to learning about structural failures. At the beginning of the module, the students are presented with a situation in which they play a role and have to investigate a collapse in order to identify the causes of the event. There is a virtual library room, in which supporting texts are provided to help understanding the technical aspects. There is also a virtual computer room. The students can ask virtual tutors about specific topics that are relevant to the task they try to perform. Several virtual tutors are implemented in each case, of which some are “storytellers” and others are “analyzers”. This format is not intensive in multimedia and still it is capable of creating a realistic situation in which the student has to perform activities similar to those that are expected from experts in the field.
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