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Opportunities to improve students' civil engineering skills for Industry 4.0 and train them for potential challenges in their professional careers go beyond industry sponsorship of capstone design projects. Students and faculty can benefit from industry mentors' involvement who can use their expertise in addressing design problems and are enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge with students. Practicing engineers have a relevant, realistic, real-world viewpoint on their subject and reinforce their relevance to professional engineering practices. Students benefit tremendously from working on real-world problems of interest to industry, business, company-specific project management, product creation processes, and experience with financial, legal, and regulatory design constraints. This paper offers an overview of the multidisciplinary capstone design course in the civil engineering curriculum in Jordan and highlights relevant practices. It provides valuable guidance for incorporating Industry 4.0 skills into the teaching of capstone design courses to deal with challenges related to the context of digital transformation. The paper concludes that industry integration in engineering curriculum can generate multi-skilled and competent engineers with essential cognitive skills such as creativity, complex information processing, and lifelong learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the application of digital technologies in the construction industry, known as Construction 4.0 or Industry 4.0. It highlights nine peer-reviewed papers that explore various technological advancements in digitizing construction, such as automated tools for earthmoving productivity, deep learning for concrete damage detection, and the use of geographical information systems for intelligent information services. The article also emphasizes the importance of integrating Industry 4.0 concepts into civil engineering education. The papers aim to provide a better understanding of the transformation and lay the groundwork for future research in this field. [Extracted from the article]

Inter-university cooperation has always been a desideratum of higher education institutions. It has developed at a slower or faster pace, for different reasons, depending on the era. Gradually, this cooperation has become more complex, giving rise to a new concept - the internationalisation of higher education. Supported by the development of technology and the increasing liberalisation of borders, cooperation in education has evolved from bilateral agreements to consortia of universities and eventually to European universities. Created at the initiative of the European Commission in 2017, European Universities are transnational alliances that over the last four years have brought about a paradigm shift in inter-university cooperation. This paper aims to discuss the participation of the Technical University of Civil Engineering of Bucharest (UTCB) in a European consortium, and its contribution to internationalisation at the institutional level. We will try to identify the advantages of being a member of this alliance, as well as the difficulties encountered throughout the cooperation and the means to overcome them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the construction industry's digital transformation processes are challenging civil engineering education. In general, students and society underestimate the civil engineering field as an outdated and archaic knowledge area. Despite the defragmentation and heterogeneity of the sector, advances have been made on the path for Construction 4.0 and 5.0 scenarios. From this perspective, the CONSTRUCT-Gequaltec group of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto have been sponsoring research and technological development using hardware and software targeting construction management solutions. This paper presents the work in progress mainly connected to the curricular units regarding project management in the Construction Section of the Civil Engineering Department. It also targets assumptions of some expected results across the research and innovation priorities from ECTP Innovative Built Environment and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Two fundamental elements of the teaching practices are presented as the Construction Sites of the Future (Laboratory-Based Education initiative) and Digital products catalogue targeting Digital Twins in Construction (Project Based Learning initiative). The learning outcomes address increasing knowledge of innovative solutions, delivering skills to deploy 5.0 actions, and targeting human-centred and sustainable attitudes and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, water utilities have relied on tried-and-true practices in the design and operation of their infrastructure, tapping new resources and expanding networks as needed. However, as the effects of climate change and/or urbanization increasingly impact both water supply and demand, utilities need new, holistic planning and management approaches. Integrated planning approaches must account for changing policies, technological progress, and unique, setting-specific operating conditions. Based on this notion, an international web seminar with faculty, researchers, and students from nine universities across five continents was conducted. In the 3-month seminar, participants were split into groups and tasked with developing future-proof, sustainable water management solutions for fictitious settings with unique resource availability, climate change predictions, demographic, and socioeconomic constraints. The goal of the seminar was to combine participants' unique perspectives to tackle challenges in developing future water infrastructure, while forming lasting relationships. Water management concepts became more daring or "out-of-the-box" as the seminar progressed. Most groups opted for a holistic approach, optimizing existing infrastructure, integrating decentralized water management, furthering digitization, and fostering the adoption of innovative policy and planning strategies. To gauge their impact on the evolution of ideas, group dynamics and communication were observed throughout the seminar. As a result, the findings serve not only as a compendium of ideas and concepts for holistic design in the water sector, but also facilitate international collaboration, improve communication in cross-cultural teams or guide the development of training programs in water management for researchers, professional engineers, or water utilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of civil engineering course education on civil engineers is profound and crucial. Due to the hierarchical and ambiguous nature of quality assessment for flipped classroom teaching, there is an urgent demand for a rational and effective approach to conduct such assessments. This would enable the targeted formulation of instructional improvement methods based on assessment outcomes, ultimately elevating the quality of pedagogy. This study combines the analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy evaluation method. The fuzzy evaluation method is utilized to identify four primary evaluation factor sets, fourteen secondary judgment factor sets, and five evaluation outcome sets, with subsequent quantification of the assessment results. The analytic hierarchy process is employed to ascertain the weight coefficients of the evaluation factors. The comprehensive assessment model for flipped classroom teaching quality is established. The assessment results indicate that the overall quality of flipped classroom teaching in the civil engineering major at Anhui University of Science and Technology, conducted through the platform of Superstar Learning Hub, falls within the ‘Good’ category. The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation score for extracurricular learning quality is the lowest, and the weight proportion attributed to flipped classroom infrastructure is the highest. Consequently, several targeted improvement measures are proposed to enhance the quality of flipped classroom teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent skills surveys of engineering graduates have highlighted a deficit in critical thinking among graduates. A possible solution to this is to increase the number of hands-on exercises in the curriculum. This could be carried out through the integration of 3D learning tools, specifically a virtual reality (VR) program, to effectively teach civil engineering practical studies and allow repeatable and measurable exercises for students. This study aims to assess the suitability of the VR program as an additional resource alongside existing learning exercises or a substitute for hands-on experiments when needed. The methodology involved creating a VR program, compatible with VR headsets to replicate an engineering experiment, namely the loading of a concrete beam to observe its failure. Students' understanding of the virtual experiment was evaluated through end-of-experiment questions. The findings indicate that the VR learning tool was successful in enhancing students' understanding of the civil engineering experiment. The immersive and interactive nature of VR contributed to a solid grasp of the concepts presented, proving its potential as a valuable educational resource. By leveraging VR technology, educational institutions can provide an engaging and effective alternative to traditional laboratory sessions, ensuring uninterrupted and high-quality learning experiences for civil engineering students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]