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This study determines the critical success factors for students and academic staff when applying and evaluating online delivery methods in colleges and universities in Kuwait. The recently implemented eLearning systems and methods in the country, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, are evaluated and the perception of the eLearning system is gauged. Targeted surveys are distributed to a representative sample of undergraduate engineering students and academic staff. The following critical success factors are considered: benefits of the eLearning system, educational system quality, information quality, instructor quality, learner quality, service quality and technical system quality. Results show that there is a correlation between the perceptions of students and academic staff, particularly regarding instructor quality, information quality and benefits of the eLearning system. Both groups of respondents agreed on the high importance of instructor quality and the low importance of benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Study: The research discusses the need for a paradigm shift in engineering education current practices to accommodate the digital native students. The paper emphasizes the importance of integrating disruptive technologies, namely Virtual Reality (VR) through Head Mounted Displays VR (HMD VR) and Desktop Based VR (DB VR) and comparing it with the traditional teaching methods. The research focuses on second‐year undergraduate students enrolled in a concrete structures course. Objectives: The objective of the study is to analyse the impact of DB VR and HMD VR on students' motivation, performance and workload in comparison with traditional 2D drawings. The study also aims to investigate how simulation sickness and system usability could impact students' motivation and performance when interpreting concrete structures. Methods: The study divided second‐year civil engineering students into three groups, 2D, DB VR and HMD VR. The performance and motivation levels of students were assessed based on the number of mistakes identified and an intrinsic motivation survey. Furthermore, data on system usability and simulation sickness were collected. Spearman rank correlation was conducted to analyse the relationships between the variables tested. Results: The results have shown that students' motivation and performance were much higher when using VR in general and HMD VR specifically, students' efficiency and accuracy were also observed. On the other hand, usability was found to be moderately correlated with motivation, with students rating HMD VR as the most usable approach. A moderate inverse correlation was observed between simulation sickness and motivation, indicating that higher simulation sickness led to lower motivation levels. Conclusion: The study concludes that integrating VR in general, DB VR, or HMD VR into a concrete structures course for undergraduate students can significantly improve students' performance and motivation. Furthermore, enhancing usability of any of the methods used can also improve the performance and motivation. On the other hand, simulation sickness inversely affects motivation and performance, therefore, VR developers and educators should not neglect it. Lay Description: What is already known about the topic: Traditional teaching methods in engineering education require improvement.Integrating digital technologies into engineering education enhances performance.Digital technologies can potentially enhance motivation. What this paper adds: Compares traditional teaching methods for concrete structures interpretation with virtual reality.Establishes correlations between motivation, performance and usabilityIntroduces how desktop‐based VR and head‐mounted display VR can produce varying results. Implications for practice and/or policy: Decision‐makers can use the information to integrate updated pedagogy into engineering curricula.Allows for further exploration of different digital technologies that can be used for concrete structure interpretation.Allows instructors to introduce virtual reality in their courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of fiber reinforcement on the shear capacity of reinforced concrete (RC) beams. Both steel and synthetic fibers at variable [...]

The article discusses an experiment which examined the flexural toughness properties of hybrid fiber-reinforced concrete. The experiment also identified the synergistic effects between fibers, if present. In fiber-reinforced concrete, fibers can be effective in arresting cracks at both macro and micro levels. In the experiment, it is noted that some hybrid composites demonstrated some synergy between fibers.