Educating the Whole Engineer - Educational Experiences that Have Impact in a Civil Engineering Problem Based Learning Programme

In 2008 the University of Limerick (UL) launched Ireland's newest Civil Engineering programme - this presented a unique opportunity for the designers to transform how civil(ian) engineers are educated to better serve modern society. An academic team of six engineers, possessing significant industry experience, combined their expertise on 'how' to engineer by drawing on personal reflections and on their 'traditional' (didactic) undergraduate education. The outcome of these deliberations led to the creation or a modern educational programme that stimulates and motivates students to engage in the interesting challenges faced by civil engineers today. A core value of the resulting programme is the pedagogy chosen for delivery. The programme adopts a Problem Based Learning (PBL) ethos in which students work in small teams to develop solutions to open-ended real-world problems. These problems drive the learning of the various syllabii. In 2022, the impact of this decision was assessed by gathering feedback from the first ten years of programme graduates via an online survey. While the survey addressed many aspects of the graduates' educational experience, this paper focuses exclusively on the learning experiences listed by the graduates that impacted their development as an engineer. These experiences are discussed in terms of the skills and attributes specified in expert reports on the habits of mind that need to be developed in engineering education, for example (Goodhew 2014).