During the Fall 1996 semester, a new two credit hour course titled "Introduction to Civil Engineering" was introduced at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. The lecture topics for this class were so varied that none of the printed text books seemed appropriate, so alternatives were needed. This paper will discuss the experiences of the author in using the World Wide Web (WWW) to create an "electronic text book" for this class.

One of the goals of the course is to train the students in the use of Netscape and how to browse the World Wide Web. It was originally planned to create a set of web pages related to this class and Web as a source for lecture materials. As the semester developed, more and more material relating to lecture topics was found on the internet. For example, discussions of the engineering profession and the areas of civil engineering can be supplemented by material posted on the web at Purdue and Colorado. An excellent engineering ethics site is available at Texas A&M. Information on engineering design is available at the University of Washington's site. Much of this information is the result of the work of various NSF coalitions on engineering education.

Information on nearly every lecture topic for "Introduction to Civil Engineering" is available.. Online versions of many standard reference works, tutorials and guides on using many software packages are available, and information on many other topics is also available.

Finding this information can be a challenge, and is probably beyond the ability of first semester students who may be using the Web for the first time. This problem was solved by creating a set of pages at SIU that have links to the other sites of interest. The pages created in-house become the text book for the course, an "electronic text book." Some of the pages have original content, and some are simply lists of pointers or links to other sites.

The student response to using the "electronic textbook" has been favorable. Besides the obvious financial benefit of not having to buy a book, the students enjoy using the computer and browsing the web. A secondary benefit is that the student's become more comfortable with computer usage, which benefits them in subsequent classes.

Recently, a set of first year level "Introduction to Engineering" courses have been added to the curriculum at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC). Courses have been introduced by Electrical, Mechanical and Civil Engineering at the freshmen level. While these courses have many similarities, each has a distinct focus and purpose. This paper is concerned with the Civil Engineering course "CE 101 - Introduction to Civil Engineering."

There were many reasons for introducing this course. Some of these reasons were in response to the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) guidelines about integrating design, computer usage and statistics throughout the curriculum. Additionally, it was felt that contact with CE students at the first year level would aid in retention which is a priority at SIUC. Finally, the faculty felt that there were several topics which should be introduced to the students. In meeting all of these goals, a diverse set of topics formed the basis of the course content. These topics include:

1. The Engineering Profession
2. Areas of Civil Engineering
3. Engineering Design Process
4. Technical Communications Oral and Written
5. Problem Solving
6. Units, Graphing and Calculations
7. Probability and Statistics
8. Estimation
9. Engineering Ethics
10. Using Software Packages - Windows, WORD, EXCEL, NETSCAPE. and E-MAIL.

With this set of lecture topics, it was felt that no printed textbook would meet the needs of this course. It was originally planned to simply use handouts and lecture notes. Since using the World Wide Web with a browser such as NETSCAPE was one of the goals of the course, it was initially planned to supplement the handouts with a web site devoted to this class. Also, the Web was viewed as a source of material to aid the instructor in preparing lectures.

It soon became apparent that the web was a gold mine of information on almost all of the topics mentioned above. It was decided that the students should have access to and use much of this information first hand, rather than having it all distilled by the professor into a set of lectures. While some original content was needed for the web site for this class, much of what was needed was already on the Web. It was decided to create a set of pages organizing the material into a readily available set of hypertext links. This concept is what is being referred to in this paper as an "Electronic Textbook."

The Engineering Profession / Fields of Civil Engineering

One item that is very important to first year engineering students is understanding what engineers are and what they do. An excellent source for this topic was found at Purdue [l] with their "The Engineering Specific Career Advisory Problem-Solving Environment (ESCAPE)." Originally, this was going to be the model for the web site for this course. The Purdue site discusses the various fields of Engineering, gives some history of the profession, offers statistics on employment and salary histories for engineers. This site is one of the best engineering sites on the Web, in the author's opinion.

Civil Engineering consists of several subfields: construction, environmental, geotechnical, hydraulics, structures, surveying, and transportation. Students entering the major need to have some understanding of these fields. The ESCAPE site at Purdue has some information on this topic. A very good discussion is presented at the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering--University of Colorado, Boulder site [2] .

The Engineering Design Process

Another important topic in this course is engineering design. A series of small design projects are assigned to introduce the student to the design process, the idea of open-ended problems and report writing. An excellent paper on the design process is available on-line. It is "Into the Swamp: What is Engineering Design and How is It Done?", Barry Hyman [3]. This paper outlines a nine step process that is geared to a first year class. Another site discussing the design process is The Engineering Design Research Center at Carnegie Mellon University [4], although it is somewhat advanced for first year engineering students. "An Introduction to Engineering Design" at the University of Virginia [5] includes links to "Case Studies in Engineering Design" and "Short Case Studies in Design Evolution." Several good design case studies are available at "Multimedia Case Studies of Design in Industry," from the National Engineering Education Delivery System (NEEDS) sponsored by the National Science Foundation [6]. These sources give the students an excellent background in the engineering design process and through the case studies they can see the process in action.

Technical Communications

It is often difficult to make engineering students realize that communication skills, both oral and written, are vital to their professional careers. Lectures are given in this course in both of these areas. The Web is used to supplement these lectures with reading assignments and on-line resources. One of these sources is "Engineering and Technical Report Authoring Hyper Text Guide," from Australia [7]. This covers both type of communications, oral and written.

In the area of technical writing, a number of sources are available. One is "Writing a Technical Paper " by Anne Eisenberg [8]. Another guide is "A Strategic Method for Writing" by John B. Smith and Catherine F. Smith [9]. These sources give some specific information on technical writing that students may not receive in their general English Composition classes. Engineering students at SIUC no longer take a course in technical writing, so exposure to these topics is vital.

In addition to the writing guides described above, many of the standard reference works are available on the Web. These include Webster's Dictionary [10], Roget's Thesaurus [11], Strunk's "The Elements of Style"[14], and Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations" [13]. The availability of these references on-line gives the student access to them from the computer while he or she is writing a paper on the word processor. Additionally, students seem to enjoy using reference works on the computer rather than obtaining hard copies from the library or book stores.

In the area of technical oral presentations an outstanding guide is being presented by EEEE. This is Cheryl Reimold's "Tools of the Trade" [14]. This covers making technical presentations in a series of articles. Another set of aids is available at the Kansas University Medical School site. They include "Developing an Effective Oral Presentation", "Designing Effective Visual Aids for Presentations", and "Creating an Effective Poster Presentation" by Jeff Radel [15].

There are many other guides for this topic available on the internet. These guides help the student's not only in this class, but serve as a reference point when needed in subsequent classes.

Units

Another area of interest in this class is the proper use of units in engineering. In particular the student must be familiar with both English units and SI units and be able to convert between the two systems. A number of links to metric related materials compiled by the American Society of Civil Engineers' Committee on Metrication are presented at "ASCE Metric References" [16]. These links provide nearly everything an engineering students needs to know about the metric (SI) system. In addition, two on-line unit converters are available: "Unit Conversion Form Selector" [17], and "Entisoft Units Measurement Conversion Calculator (The Internet Version)" [ 18]. Once again the Web provides not only information about the topic but interactive tools to help the student.

Ethics

Another topic that is covered in this introductory class is Engineering Ethics. The content on the Web in this area is very deep. Perhaps the best site id "Engineering Ethics" at Texas A&M University [19] a project funded by the National Science Foundation to develop material for introducing ethical issues into required undergraduate engineering courses. Another good site is MIT's "Ethics Center for Engineering & Science"[20]. This site includes thirty-six discussion cases based on cases considered by the Board of Ethical Review (BER) of the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE).

A great deal of information on two disasters that form the basis for a good discussion of Engineering Ethics is available on the Web. The Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion offers a relevant and interesting topic for the discussion of Engineering Ethics. "The Challenger Accident," created by the Space Policy Project of the Federation of American Scientists [21] has links to a great deal of information on this tragedy. "The Kansas City Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse," at Texas A&M [22] is a good area for discussion.

Additionally, nearly all of the professional societies (ASME, ASCE, IEEE, NSPE, etc.) have their codes of ethics available on-line

Software Tutorials

One major goal of this course is to provide students with some basic skills for using the computer. The applications include word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, and e-mail. At SIUC these applications translate into using Microsoft WORD and EXCEL, NETSCAPE, and EUDORA. Information is also available on other major programs such as WORDPERFECT, QUATTRO PRO, and Microsoft INTERNET EXPLORER.

One of the first challenges to using the concept of the Web as a teaching tool, is teaching the students how to use the Web. The skill levels of students vary greatly. Some are experts and some have never used the internet. Netscape itself has an on- line "Netscape Handbook." Available from it's toolbar. R. Scott Wennerdahl's "Netscape Tutorial" [23] from Agricultural Instructional Media (AIM) Lab at the University of Illinois is also very helpful.

Some good tutorials are available for WORD and EXCEL from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill School of Medicine [24]. Help is available from the AIM lab for WORD and EXCEL [25].

All of this material is available on the World Wide Web relating to the topics covered in the Introduction to Civil Engineering course. The challenge facing the instructor is to organize the material into a usable form. The simplest approach would be to create a bookmark file listing the sites. It was felt that creating a set of pages to direct the students to these sites would provide a better interface, and allow the instructor to provide more information.

Creating a web page requires a basic knowledge of hypertext markup language (HTML). With a few HTML tags and a text editor such as Windows Notepad the pages can be created. An alternative is using a web page editor. Many shareware versions are available. Microsoft FrontPage is a commercially available product. Basic formatting of the pages is relatively easy to accomplish. Graphics, sound and video can also be added with some advanced knowledge.

The addresses of the various sites were found using the search engines available on the internet. Some of these are EXCITE, LYCOS, INFOSEEK, and YAHOO. In the course of developing the content all of these search engines were used. Skill in using some of the advanced features of these search engines proved very helpful. Features such as Boolean operators ( and, or, not) helped to refine and narrow the searches on the various topics. The actual usage of these features varies from one search engine to another, so one must study each engine individually. The results from the various search engines are not identical, so it is a good practice to use more than on engine on each topic.

There is a certain amount of brute force required to finalize the sites selected. One technique used by the author was to visit every site (or the first 15 or 20 sites) returned by a search. Ones that appeared interesting were bookmarked for later review. Many of the hits returned by a search were not really on point and were quickly eliminated. The sites that were bookmarked were then revisited and examined in detail. Some further elimination occurred, and the "good" results were organized by sub-topic. An appropriate web page was then prepared. As an example, the master page is shown in figure 1, and the page relating to technical writing is shown in figure 2.

The internet provides engineering educators with a vast array of educational resources. Finding and using these resources is a daunting task for students, especially first year engineering students. If the instructor can locate and organize the appropriate resources in an easy to use fashion for the students, the power of the "information superhighway" can be unleashed. One approach is to prepare a set of web pages to serve as an "electronic textbook" for the class. This has been done at SIUC for CE 101 - Introduction to Civil Engineering. The results have been good. Students find the site informative and easy to use. They like being able to go in depth on topics of interest.

Preparing a site requires a basic skill in creating web pages. If the instructor lacks that skill, there may be help available on campus, either formally through the Computing Center, or informally through colleagues and students. Access to a server to post the pages is also needed, but almost all colleges and universities seem to have web pages, so getting access should not be a problem. A certain expertise with search engines is also a necessary skill. Developing this skill will make an instructor's use of the web, personally and professionally, more rewarding. The process is somewhat time consuming. While it is true that "it is all out there on the web", separating the wheat from the chaff can be a painstaking process. The volatile nature of the Web requires a certain amount of site maintenance. Web addresses change, sites are created and abandoned frequently. This is not a one time project. Periodic review of your site to insure that all links are still valid is a necessity. As new material is added to the web, most sites can be improved with new links.

This paper is about using the web in a first year introduction to engineering class. It is easy to envision creating a similar "electronic textbook" for a class such as a senior capstone design class. Topics could include scheduling, project management, cost estimating and others. Application of this technique to general education classes about technology and society would also be easy. Content driven classes such as thermodynamics, strength of materials, fluid mechanics, etc. would not be likely candidates for this approach, although more and more information about areas such as these is becoming available on the web.

REFERENCES

1. "The Engineering Specific Career Advisory Problem-Solving Environment (ESCAPE),'' Purdue University, Department of Freshman Engineering, West Lafayette, IN 47907 http://fairway.ecn.purdue.edu/ESCAPE/.

2. "Intro CE"; Bechtel CAD Laboratory HyperMedia Group; Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering; University of Colorado, Boulder; http://civil.colorado.edu/courseware/mos-cven/ce/intro/texts/introce.html

3. "Into the Swamp: What is Engineering Design and How is It Done?", Barry Hyman, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, http://octavia.ce.washington.edu:2048/ENGR100/Teaching_Admin/Readings/SwampVibes.html< /a >

4. The Engineering Design Research Center, A National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center, Carnegie Mellon University, http://www.edrc.cmu.edu/

5. "An Introduction to Engineering Design," University of Virginia, http://fulton.seas.virginia.edu/~shj2n/case/

6. "Multimedia Case Studies of Design in Industry," National Engineering Education Delivery System (NEEDS), http://www.needs.org/database/online.html

7. "Engineering and Technical Report Authoring Hyper Text Guide," ASEAN-Australian Economic Cooperation Program, http://mustang.fste.ac.cowan.edu.au/AAECP/AAECP.htm

8. "Writing a Technical Paper," Anne Eisenberg, Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, NY, http://carol.fwi.uva.nl/~leo/papers/writing_a_paper/writing_a_paper.html

9. "A Strategic Method for Writing," John B. Smith and Catherine F. Smith, http://epsilon.cs.unc.edu/~jbs/sm

l0. "Hypertext Webster's Dictionary Interface," http://c.gp.cs.cmu.edu:5103/prog/webster

l l . "Roget's Internet Thesaurus," http://www2.thesaurus.com/thesaurus/

l 2. "The Elements of Style," William Strunk, Jr., http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/strunk/

l 3. "Familiar Quotations," John Bartlett, http://www.cc.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/bartlett/

14. "Tools of the Trade," Cheryl Reimold, http://www.ieee.org/society/pcs/creimold.html

l 5. "Effective Presentations," Jeff Radel, University of Kansas Medical Center, http://www.kumc.edu/SAH/OTEd/jradel/effective.html

16. "ASCE Metric References," http://www.infi.net/~cstone/com_i_1.htm

17. "Unit Conversion Form Selector," http://www.soton.ac.uk/~scp93ch/refer/convform.html

18. "Entisoft Units Measurement Conversion Calculator (The Internet Version)" http://entisoft.earthlink.net/scripts/UnitsCGI.Exe

19. "Engineering Ethics," Texas A&M, http://ethics.tamu.edu/

20. "Ethics Center for Engineering & Science," http://web.mit.edu/ethics/www/home.html

21. "The Challenger Accident," Space Policy Project, Federation of American Scientists http://www.fas.org/spp/51L.html

22. "The Kansas City Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse," Texas A&M, http://ethics.tamu.edu/ethics/hyatt/hyatt1.ht m

23. "Netscape Tutorial," R. Scott Wennerdahl, Agricultural Instructional Media (AIM) Lab, University of Illinois, http://w3.aces.uiuc.edu/AIM/Discovery/Net/www/netscape/index.html

24. "Communications, Productivity & WWW Software Communications," School of Medicine, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, http://www.med.unc.edu/sfthmnu.htm

25. "CCSO Student Free Computer Course Handouts," Agricultural Instructional Media (AIM) Lab, University of Illinois, http://w3.aces.uiuc.edu/AIM/CCSOcourses/

Figure 1. Main page for CE 101 Web Site up

Figure 2. Technical Writing page for CE 101 Web site up

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