European Journal of Engineering Education

Vol. 32, No. 5, October 2007, 517–526

What are the perceptions of lecturers towards using cooperative learning in civil engineering?

A. AHERN*

School of Architecture, Landscape and Civil Engineering, University College Dublin,
Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland

The objective of the current paper is to examine how group learning and cooperative learning are used in civil engineering courses. The paper defines group learning and cooperative learning in the first section. It is hypothesized that group learning is used in civil engineering courses to build teamwork skills and communication skills among civil engineers but that its effectiveness is not maximized owing to a lack of awareness of how it can be structured. The paper suggests that using cooperative learning is more effective. The paper describes a study of the attitudes and perceptions of lecturers in civil engineering departments in several universities. The paper finds that many lecturers use group learning in order to teach civil engineers ‘soft skills’ but are uncomfortable with the assessment of such work. There is a lack of awareness regarding how group work can be structured and regarding research into the use of cooperative learning.

Keywords:  Group learning; Cooperative learning; Perceptions

1.    Introduction

The current paper examines the use of group learning and cooperative learning in civil engi-neering courses. The objective is to examine how common the use of group learning in civil engineering courses is and why it is used. The paper will also look at how group learning is implemented by lecturers and if that implementation maximizes its potential benefits. Finally, the paper will address the reservations held by lecturers regarding group learning and examine if using a more structured approach to group learning, such as cooperative learning, would address some of these reservations.

The definitions of group work and cooperative learning as used in this paper are described as follows. Group work involves a number of students working together on a project or problem. In this paper, cooperative learning is defined as by Johnson et al. (1998). Cooperative learning involves people working in teams under the following very particular conditions:

*Email: Aoife.ahern@ucd.ie

	

1.	Positive Interdependence: all team members rely upon each other. Positive interdependence can also be structured by ensuring that the team has mutual goals, joint rewards and shared resources (Johnson et al. 1998). 

2.	Individual accountability: each team member must have some individual accountability for the work that is presented. 

3.	Face to face promotive interaction: some work must be done as a team and not parcelled out to individuals in a group. 

4.	Appropriate use of collaborative skills: students need to develop and use communication skills, decision-making skills, conflict management and team-work. 

5.	Group processing: the group should regularly reflect on how well they are working together, on what is working and what is not working in their teams and should be able to make changes to allow the team to work more effectively. 

Smith et al. (2005) state that the main difference between cooperative learning and group learning is that cooperative learning needs structured individual accountability so that each member of the group is working for him or herself and for the group as a whole.

Research in the past has demonstrated that lecturers use group learning to teach students learn the ‘softer’ skills that they need to be good civil engineers: they learn to work in teams, they learn how to communicate and they learn how to solve problems in a group (Felder and Brent 2003). However, what evidence is there that simply asking students to work in a group will bring about good teamwork skills or will result in good communication skills? As Felder and Brent (2001) state ‘there must be a better way of getting students to work together than simply putting them in groups and asking them to do something.’ Felder and Brent (2003) argue that group work can help students to achieve these softer skills if structured in a particular way. However, while lecturers specify learning these softer skills as objectives of using group work, few lecturers measure the impacts of group learning on softer skills, simply assuming that working in groups or teams must result in better team skills.

The paper describes a survey of the civil engineering lecturers in three universities. These lecturers have been asked about their use of group learning, their reasons for using it and their reservations regarding its use. They have also been asked about how they structure their group learning and about their awareness of cooperative learning.

2.    Cooperative learning

Cooperative learning is generally acknowledged to have beneficial impacts on the learning and the achievement of students (Johnson et al. 1998, Johnson et al. 2000, Felder and Brent 2003). However, there are some who believe that not all the impacts of cooperative learning are beneficial and cooperative learning is still not widespread in engineering and technical courses (Felder and Brent 2003). This may in some cases be attributable to a lack of awareness of what it is (Mourtos and Allen 2001).

The impacts of cooperative learning on students’ achievements have been researched by Slavin (1995) and Johnson et al. (2000). Both studies found that cooperative learning has a positive impact on the academic learning of students, with Johnson et al. (2000) finding that average effect size on academic learning is 0.61. This means that a student taught using cooperative learning methods will test above the 70th percentile of students taught using traditional methods. Johnson et al.’s study is a meta-analysis of several studies over a period of 20 years that looks at the impacts of cooperative learning on student achievement. Slavin (1995) examines how cooperative learning impacts on student learning while trying to explain why cooperative learning has particular impacts, with relation to several educational theories.

Slavin (1995) tries to explain why cooperative learning works from the perspective of social cohesion theories and cognitive theories.

Felder and Brent (2003) also state that there is growing evidence that students taught coop-eratively exhibit higher academic achievement, deeper understanding of material and less stress. These students have a tendency to demonstrate deeper learning, more critical thinking and a higher level reasoning skills than those taught in more traditional ways (Felder and Brent 2003). Mourtos and Allen (2001) found that the grades of students taught using cooperative leaning showed significant improvement. Smith et al. (2005) state that cooperative learning has significant advantages over individual and competitive learning methods in terms of the academic success of students.

Smith et al. (2005) describe how cooperative learning has positive impacts on students’ team working abilities and on their communication skills. Felder and Brent (2003) explain how students learn how to learn and to carry out research through cooperative learning, thus equipping themselves with the skills required to become lifelong learners.

If cooperative learning has been shown to have such positive impacts on students’academic achievement and on their communication skills, why is cooperative learning not used widely in civil engineering courses? There may be several reasons for this, some of which relate to negative misconceptions held by lecturers with regard to cooperative learning. In addition, there may be some lecturers who are not aware of what cooperative learning is.

A common myth, according to Jacobson et al. (1998) is that cooperative learning cannot work for technical courses. This is because, according to Jacobson et al. (1998) lecturers on these courses feel that there is too much material covered for cooperative learning to work and that didactic teaching is more likely to allow large tracts of material to be covered. Felder and Brent (2001) describe how cooperative learning can be very successfully implemented with engineering students. Jacobson et al. (1998) state that by setting learning objectives that cooperative learning will ensure that students have the core competencies and skills required by the course. Greater emphasis needs to be placed on the learning objectives and on the skills that the students must acquire to be civil engineers than on covering large amounts of material.

There is a worry among some lecturers that while cooperative learning may be helpful for average students, gifted students suffer with cooperative learning and research shows that higher performing students themselves feel that they have most to lose by being involved in group work (Livingstone and Lynch 2000). However, Johnson et al. (2000) found a positive impact for all students, including high achievers, while Slavin (1995) concluded that cooper-ative learning leads to greater retention of material for all students. If the assessment method used does not hinder these high achievers they will not be averse to cooperative learning (Jacobson et al. 1998). If all members are individually accountable, high achievers will not feel that cooperative learning is unfair (Jacobson et al. 1998).

Mourtos and Allen (2001) postulate another reason that cooperative learning is not tradi-tionally used in engineering education. They state that engineering in the US and Asia is a very competitive course, attracting students who like to compete. In Ireland, although not in Europe in general, entry to civil engineering courses is competitive. In addition, the lecturers and researchers also operate in a competitive environment where they compete with each other for research funding and promotions. Therefore, cooperation is not always widely recognized as being beneficial and lecturers fail to introduce it into their courses.

Cooperative learning can be difficult for lecturers to introduce. As Mourtos andAllen (2001) point out there are fears among lecturers about cooperative learning. Some lecturers feel it will not work if classes are large or that students will be not be motivated to meet or work outside the classroom (Jacobson et al. 1998). However, cooperative learning has been used in large class situations, although it can be more difficult to introduce and individual learning may work better in classes that are very large (Jacobson et al. 1998). Felder and Brent (1994)

also point out that it is difficult for lecturers to move from learning that is teacher-centred to learning that is student-centred. However, if the objective is to produce engineers who will engage in lifelong learning, then allowing them to have some control over their learning while at college will equip them with the skills needed to become lifelong learners.

3.    Research study

The lack of the use of cooperative learning in civil engineering departments may be attributable to a lack of understanding of what is cooperative learning. It may also be that the negative per-ceptions that civil engineering lecturers have towards group learning may be due to problems that could be overcome using cooperative learning. In order to study these ideas, a question-naire has been issued to lecturers in civil engineering departments. This questionnaire is shown in Appendix A. There were 20 responses.

The purpose of this questionnaire is to establish how familiar lecturers are with group learning and cooperative learning. The questionnaire looks at whether lecturers use any form of group learning within their classes and what the objectives of introducing group learning are. The lecturers are asked how the group work is assessed and what the theoretical background to the work is. They are asked how the work is structured in terms of individual accountability. All lecturers are asked to state whether they are aware of the term ‘cooperative learning’ and what they think it means. They are also asked to describe their reservations regarding group work.

Lecturers are asked about ‘group work’ rather than cooperative learning specifically, as the objective is to discover the perceptions of lecturers towards group work, to uncover how many are using group work to teach students teamwork and communication skills, and to find out if they structure this work in any particular way in order to ensure those skills are learnt. The author hypothesizes that many lecturers are using group work to achieve these skills but do not structure the work in a particular way and are unaware of what cooperative learning is or what it entails.

4.    Results

Table 1 shows a summary of responses.

The paper postulates that using cooperative learning with Johnson et al.’s criteria (1998) will maximize the benefits of asking students to work in groups and will achieve more satisfactory results than simply using group work. None of the respondents were aware of what cooperative learning was but all used group learning in their classrooms. Some used groups in laboratory work; others used groups for in-class exercises while others used group work for students to work on projects outside of the classroom.

The sizes of the groups formed by lecturers ranged from 2 students to 8 students in a group. Most researchers (Felder and Brent 2003, Johnson et al. 2000) recommend that groups comprise no more than 5 students but groups of 6–8 students were most common in these civil engineering courses. Lecturers stated that this was owing to the large class sizes and lack of time and resources, which would allow more and smaller groups.

All lecturers, except for one, allowed the students to select themselves or used random allocation to form the groups, although one lecturer used results from examinations to ensure groups were of mixed ability. No other lecturer mentioned that this was important in form-ing the groups. This was despite the fact that several lecturers later mentioned that in some

	Table  1.	Summary of responses.					
							
	Question		Yes	No			
						
	Do you ever ask your students to work in pairs or groups in any	20	0			
	of your courses?						
	Do you use group work to assess students’ performance?	17	3			
	Awareness of educational theories?	2	18			
	Do you ensure that there is positive interdependence in your	3	17			
	groups?						
	Do you ensure that there is individual accountability in your	2	18			
	groups?						
	Is any of the work done interactively?	20	0			
	Do you teach your students how to use collaborative skills for	2	18			
	group work?						
	Do you encourage your students to reassess their group goals	1	19			
	and to examine what they are doing as a team on a regular					
	basis?						
	Have you heard of cooperative learning?	0	20			
	Do you think you need training or help in introducing group	18	2			
	learning into the classroom?						

groups there were problems attributable to too many strong or weak students being in the group. One lecturer stated that he had allowed students to pick their own groups in the past but that he found that female students were often not given the opportunity to voice their opin-ions in predominantly male groups. This is a factor that Felder and Brent (2003) discuss at length. They advise that groups should be formed by lecturers and should be of mixed ability. In addition, they state that minority students (females or ethnic minorities) should not be put into groups where they are in the minority as their research has shown that these students are not given the chance to voice their opinions or to put forward their ideas within these groups.

The group work was usually assessed – only three lecturers did not assess the group work – but all lecturers stated they had difficulties with the assessment of group work. For this reason, group work in all cases comprised only a small percentage of a student’s overall mark. As one lecturer stated:

‘The group report is marked but I feel that this is a flawed method. I think group work is important for students to learn skills but it is unfair. To address the lack of bias and the unfairness of this I give only a small number of marks for the exercise and the exam has lots of marks’.

Another lecturer stated:

‘I assigned 10% of the final mark to group performance. The work is actually worth more as the project is quite big. But I think it’s unfair. I got so much resistance from students about having their marks dependent on others’.

This opinion was very common with lecturers feeling group work was important for students to learn skills and that it had to be assessed to be of any academic value but that it was dangerous to allow it to count for too much as it was ‘unfair’, in particular on strong students: ‘assessment of group work is so difficult. It tends to level out the strong and weak students and rewards the weakest students’. Lecturers were unaware of the concepts of individual accountability or positive interdependence as outlined in Johnson et al.’s (1998) work, which can help for these difficulties to be overcome. When asked if they tried to ensure that there was positive interdependence and individual accountability, the vast majority said that they did not. A typical response from lecturers was:

‘Positive interdependence and individual accountability –that’s very theoretical. It’s impossible. You can only do it if you have lots of supervision and I don’t have time’.

Another lecturer stated:

‘I do not ensure that there is positive interdependence or individual accountability. I would love to know how it is done. It is certainly possible for one student to do everything in the group work I set. Indeed there is anecdotal evidence that the group members take turns to do the projects’.

Kaufmann and Felder (2000) point out that many lecturers cite the difficulty of ensuring individual accountability as a major reason for not using cooperative learning. Johnson et al. (2000) and Felder and Brent (2001) state that positive interdependence and individ-ual accountability are absolutely essential to successful cooperative learning. Kaufmann and Felder (2000) suggest how a peer-rating system can be used to account for individual effort in group-work. They suggest that students are asked to rate themselves and their peers con-fidentially. Using this rating and correlations between ratings and self-ratings, weak students ‘piggybacking’ on the work of others, strong students carrying the group, dysfunctional teams and teams where agreement to rate everyone equally were identified.

Kaufmann and Felder (2000) found this to be an excellent way of allowing for individual effort and found strong correlations between self-rating and peer rating, with self-rating more likely to be deflated rather than inflated. In addition they found it possible to identify weak students who used the group’s work to achieve good marks by identifying those students who consistently were awarded low ratings from others in their group. However, it is apparent from the responses of the lecturers in this study that many lecturers feel that it is impossible to take individual accountability into account and these lecturers are unaware of work carried out by people such as Kaufmann and Felder (2000). These lecturers are unaware of Johnson et al.’s (1998) recommendations regarding the conditions required for cooperative learning to be successful and generally felt it was impossible to structure group learning to ensure these conditions existed.

Table 2 shows what they hoped to achieve from using group learning. From this study it was apparent that within civil engineering many lecturers use group work to achieve the softer skills required for being a civil engineer. All who responded stated that teamwork skills were being learned through group work. There were several lecturers who stated that there were also more pragmatic reasons for using group learning such as large class sizes. Group projects meant that these lecturers could assign resources more efficiently and would have less marking to do than if projects were assigned individually.

When asked how these objectives were achieved, few lecturers had real strategies. Most lecturers left this to the students themselves to ensure that teamwork skills were achieved. One lecturer stated that teamwork was achieved as otherwise ‘students would know that they would be ridiculed by class members’ if the team was ill prepared for presentations made at the end of the year. Most lecturers used assessment to see if the objectives had been achieved.

Table  2.	Objectives.		
			
		Number of times this	
Objectives		objective is stated	
		
To encourage teamwork and to learn skills required for teamwork	20	
(dealing with conflict, allocation of tasks) (Engineers Ireland		
Accreditation Criteria)			
To encourage students to be able to work in multi-disciplinary	5	
settings (Engineers Ireland Accreditation Criteria)		
To allow more complex problems to be tackled		4	
To become lifelong learners (learn from each other and themselves)	4	
(Engineers Ireland Accreditation Criteria) 4 To encourage class		
participation			
To allow efficient use of classroom and laboratory resources	4	

		
	Table  3.	Reservations about group work.		
						
	Reservations about		Lecturers who			
	group work		mentioned this		
					
	Lack of accountability	18			
	Lack of fairness to students in assessment	15			
	Takes too much of lecturers’ time	12			
	Takes too much class time	8			
	Insufficient resources	8			
	Assertive students manipulating others	5			
	Lack of enthusiasm from students	3			
	No reservations		2			
	Gender divide in teams	1			

By examining the students’ performance, they felt they could ensure the objectives were achieved, although the assessment did not in any case mentioned by the lecturers specifically measure teamwork or teamwork skills. Instead, it was assumed that a group that achieved a high mark in the assessed work would have mastered these skills.

Table 3 shows the reservations held regarding the use of groups in learning and the obstacles that lecturers felt existed when they wanted to introduce group learning. While all lecturers used group work in their courses, lecturers had some strong reservations about how useful it was and how difficult it was to introduce. Many of these reservations centred on topics already mentioned in this paper such as the lack of individual accountability and the lack of fairness to high-achieving students.

‘Care needs to be taken to avoid unfairness to one member of the group whose capability is substantially out of line with that of the group as a whole’.

Lecturers also expressed concerns regarding what they felt was the lack of support of using group learning (and other innovative techniques) within their classrooms. They had insufficient time to supervise or design group exercises and insufficient resources to implement exercises. The exercises also took up too much time within the class.

‘The main difficulty with group work is devoting sufficient time to it within the module to make sure that it does achieve the required learning objectives. Resources for running these sessions are becoming issues with increasing numbers’.

While another stated that his schedule was already ‘too overcrowded’ with research, administration and teaching for him to implement group work more effectively.

Only one lecturer had no reservations regarding group work, considering it to be extremely effective.

It would appear that group learning is used extensively in civil engineering courses in Ireland but lecturers are not sure if its benefits are being maximized – with many lecturers worried about the fairness of the group learning, believing that it is impossible to ensure positive interdependence or individual accountability. However, using Johnson et al.’s (1998) model of cooperative learning there are many ways in which positive interdependence and individual accountability can be introduced into group learning.

With this in mind, lecturers were asked about their familiarity with educational theories, cooperative learning and group learning techniques such as TAPPS and Jigsaw. Only one lecturer was familiar with any educational theories (social cognitivism) but was unsure what this theory meant. None had heard of TAPPS or Jigsaw or any other learning techniques.

In cooperative learning, Johnson et al. (1998) state that the group should regularly reflect on how well they are working together, on what is working and what is not working in their teams and should be able to make changes to allow the team to work more effectively. Lecturers

were asked if students were asked to reflect on these issues. Only two lecturers asked their students to reflect on the work done and on the teamwork process but did not ask students to do this in any collaborative way.

Finally, lecturers were asked if they felt that they needed help or training in introducing group learning. Only three lecturers said that they felt they did not need any help or training with most lecturers stating they needed help with the assessment of group learning.

It appears that lecturers recognize the benefits of group learning in terms of teaching students certain skills and all respondents use it in some form. However, the general opinion is that group learning is unfair to more able students, and cannot be used in assessment or should not make up a significant proportion of marks awarded to students. There is a lack of awareness of how positive interdependence or individual accountability can be ensured with most lecturers believing it is impossible to ensure these. The benefits of group learning are, therefore, not being maximized. The general opinions can be summed up the by following quote:

‘The fundamental problem remains. Students are graded as individuals and group work blurs the contribution of individuals. It is unfair to the best students. Therefore, while group work is worthwhile and necessary for students to learn about work in the real world, I am reluctant to make students engage in an activity for which there are no academic rewards and the students are also reluctant to engage in those activities’.

This is despite significant research demonstrating how cooperative learning can actually improve students’ performances.

5.    Conclusions

The research demonstrated that group learning is widely used in civil engineering departments but tends to be introduced by lecturers individually with little or no training and without being linked to assessment practices. While lecturers assess group learning, they are unlikely to allow it to contribute significantly to students’ grades as they perceive it to be unfair to the highest achievers. They also tend to feel that it is impossible to introduce individual accountability into group learning or to make the assessment fair. Lecturers use group learning, as students need to learn certain skills to be civil engineers that they do not learn in lectures or examinations. However, they do not structure the work in any particular way to ensure the skills are covered and they do not generally check if these skills have been learned.

The author of this paper feels that while lecturers have a great many reservations regarding the perceived unfairness of group learning and the difficulties associated with assessing group learning, there is a lack of awareness of cooperative learning as defined by Johnson et al. (1998). Improving awareness of cooperative learning could help lecturers overcome their reservations relating to asking student to work together.

Cooperative learning has been shown to have very positive impacts on students’ learning, in particular in relation to the softer skills that it is the objective of the lecturers to teach their students when using group learning (Felder and Brent 2001). In addition, using cooperative learning and being introduced to the ideas of Johnson et al. (1998, 2000) could help lecturers address their difficulties regarding the unfairness of group learning and the lack of individual accountability. However, there is a need for civil engineering lecturers to receive training in the use of cooperative learning and to learn how it works.

Johnson et al. (2000), Felder and Brent (2001, 2003) and Kaufmann and Felder (2000) all give examples of how the conditions of positive interdependence and individual accountability can be introduced to group learning. For group learning to be effective, Johnson et al. (1998) argue that positive interdependence is essential. Yet the lecturers surveyed generally felt that this was impossible. Johnson et al. (1998) argue that the team members should need each other to succeed so there must be some link between the performance of individuals and the group.

The author of the present paper feels that the usefulness of group work is not currently maximized in civil engineering courses. This situation could be improved if lecturers were trained in how to use cooperative learning.

References

Felder, R. and Brent, R., Cooperative learning in technical courses: procedures, pitfalls and payoffs, ERIC Docu-ment Reproduction Service Report ED 377038. Available online at http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/ Coopreport.html#Conclusion (accessed 5 February 2007).

Felder, R.M. and Brent, R., Effective strategies for cooperative learning. J. Cooperation Collaboration in College Teaching, 2001, 10, 63–69.

Felder, R. and Brent, E., Designing and Teaching Courses to satisfy the ABET engineering criteria. J. Engng Edu., 2003, 92, 7–25.

Jacobson, D., Davis, J. and Licklider, B., Ten myths of cooperative learning in engineering education. In Proceedings of the IEEE Frontiers in Education Meeting, Tempe, Arizona, 4–7 November 1998.

Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R.T. Smith, K.A., Active Learning: Cooperation in the College Classroom, 1998 (Interaction Book Company, Minnesota, USA).

Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R.T. and Stanne, M.B., Cooperative learning methods: a meta analysis, 2000. Available online at http://www.co-operation.org/pages/cl-methods.html (accessed 2 February 2007).

Kaufmann, D. and Felder, R., Accounting for individual effort in cooperative learning teams. J. Engng Edu., 2000, 89, 133–140.

Livingstone, D. and Lynch, K., Group project work and student-centered active learning: two different experiences. 2000, Studies in higher education. 25, 3, 245–325.

Mourtos, N.J. and Allen, E., Introducing cooperative learning through a faculty instructional development program. J. Engng Edu., 2001, 90 669–675.

Smith, K., Shepherd, S., Johnson, D. and Johnson, R., Pedagogies of engagement: classroom-based practices. J. Engng Edu., 2005, 94, 1–15.

Slavin, R.E., Research on Cooperative Learning and Achievement: What we know, what we need to know. 1995 (Centre for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk, John Hopkins University, Maryland, USA).

Appendix A: Questionnaire

1.	Do you ever ask your students to work in pairs or groups in any of your courses? If so could you describe how you do this in one course, outlining how many people are in a team, how these teams are selected, what the students are asked to do and how the work is assessed? (Please continue on a separate page if required). If not, could you explain why you do not use group learning and please ignore questions 2–12). 

2.	Why do you use group work? What are the objectives you hope to achieve? 

3.	How do you ensure that these objectives are achieved? 

4.	Do you use group work to assess students’ performance? Please explain why/why not. 

5.	Are you aware of any educational theories supporting your use of group work to achieve particular objectives? 

6.	Do you have any reservations about using group work? Could you explain what these are? 

7.	Do you ensure that there is positive interdependence in your groups? That is, do you ensure that all team members rely upon each other, or is it possible for one team member to do all the work? 

8.	Do you ensure that there is individual accountability in your groups? How? 

9.	Do your students do any work interactively within the groups? 

10.	Do you encourage your students to reassess their group goals and to examine what they are doing as a team on a regular basis? 

11.	Cooperative learning involves people working in teams under the following very particular conditions: positive interdependence, individual accountability, face to face interaction, collaborative skills, group processing. 

Have you heard of cooperative learning? 

Yes

Please define what you mean by ‘cooperative learning’?

No

12.	What are the major obstacles to introducing group learning in civil engineering courses? 

13.	Have you ever heard of any of the following forms of cooperative learning? If so could you explain what you think it as and give your opinion on if it could be used in civil engineering courses effectively? 

Jigsaw TAPPS 
Think-Pair-Share 

14.	Do you think you need training or help in introducing group learning into your courses? responses. 

About the authors

Dr Aoife Ahern graduated with a degree in civil engineering from Trinity College Dublin in 1998, before completing a PhD in transportation engineering in University College London in 2001. She subsequently spent 3 years lecturing in Trinity College Dublin. She now lectures in the civil engineering department in University College Dublin where she has worked since 2003. Dr Ahern completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Teaching at third level in 2006 and is currently involved in a research project looking at problem-based learning and enquiry-based learning for civil engineers