Fostering Critical Thinking Through A Service-Learning, Combined Sewer Analysis Project In An Undergraduate Course in Hydrologic Engineering

The ability to exercise engineering judgment and think critically when put into unfamiliar situations is important to graduating engineering students as they begin their careers. However, many engineering courses focus on teaching students the background information and fundamental principles for a topic, without adequately engaging students in activities that cultivate and reinforce critical thinking or easily relate to real-world engineering projects. The result is often that students may 'know' things about a topic, but are far less able to 'do' engineering work in that topic. Upon entering the workforce, students will find that the overarching problem is dealing with uncertainty: information needed to solve the problem at hand is not neatly summarized in a question statement, and related textbook examples may not explicitly suggest the needed analytical procedure. How can instructors provide students the experience of 'doing' engineering work, and developing critical thinking at the university level that emulates the environment of real-world engineering practice? The application of servicelearning projects, which use the EFFECTs-based technique of an underlying driving question, may contribute to the development of both practice-based experience and critical thinking.