Integration of Information Technology Software in a Civil Engineering Program – Learning Styles Considered

Expectations of information technology skills continue to grow in the Civil Engineering profession, demanding that universities include the development of information technology knowledge in their vision and goals, and ABET outcomes and objectives. Since 2007, the Civil Engineering Program at the United States Military Academy has evolved their approach to integrating information technology into multiple courses across the program. In 2009, a comprehensive study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of this approach and three specific challenges were identified: limited faculty capacity to maintain pace with the information technologies, complexities and costs of the technologies, and difficulty of integrating the technologies across a program rather than a one-course exposure. In the following years, these challenges were addressed and teaching approach to information technology evolved to address these challenges. In 2011, a follow-up study was completed to assess the evolution and indentify future work to continue to evolve the approach. Specifically, it was reported that through the evolution and assessment it become readily apparent that there was a unique and strong relationship between learning styles and teaching/tutoring approaches. Although this is an obvious statement relative to all learning and teaching environments, the demands of teaching information technology across multiple domains of development (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor) made this connection even more critical. This paper will discuss the study of the learning styles considerations in teaching information technology and how teaching/tutoring approaches can best be developed to address student learning styles across multiple domains of development. Longitudinal assessment results will be compared to the 2009 and 2011 studies, along with other assessments. It is believed that these results, and the continued assessment of the teaching approach at this institution, will provide valuable insight to other programs to help them overcome the challenges of teaching information technologies.