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Submitted in fulfillment for the Master of Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering and Surveying, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2015. / Promulgation of the Higher Education Qualifications Framework (HEQF) tasks the Council for Higher Education (CHE), South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) and standards generating bodies (Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA)) with guiding institutions through the implementation of the new framework. Implementation is through a phased approach spanning a five-year period beginning in January 2011 and with anticipated culmination in December 2014. As the Higher Education Framework Handbook (CHE 2011:2) states: ‘all existing institutions, public and private, offering existing and previously accredited higher education programmes will be impacted upon by this process in some manner or form, whether it be through a minor name change or a complete renewal of the programme content.’ Consequently, universities of technology (UoT’s) have embarked on a curriculum renewal process and the Civil Engineering Department of Durban University of Technology (DUT) is no different. It is within this context of participation and multiple contributory environments of different role-players that this study was founded. This research explored the Civil Engineering industry’s involvement in the curriculum renewal at DUT with the intention of understanding its contribution and influence in the renewal process and particularly in terms of curriculum design. The scope of the study was restricted to DUT Civil Engineering Department and their graduates, with subjects selected from a convenience sample of DUT Civil Engineering Department’s database of employers that have in the past and presently employ DUT graduates and/ or Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) students. The sample constituted organisations from the contracting, consulting and para-statal fields of employment. A questionnaire was designed containing both open-ended questions and rating scales that explored and probed the Civil Engineering industry level of involvement in the curriculum and curriculum renewal activities at DUT. In addition, interviews were conducted with seasoned Civil Engineering staff that have interacted with industry at various levels to gain their view of industry’s involvement with design of the Civil Engineering curriculum. Data from both questionnaires and interviewees overwhelmingly suggested that industry is not directly involved with the curriculum renewal currently underway at DUT, some respondents only gathered that such an activity was taking place through the medium of the questionnaire. This suggests that the resultant curriculum will be void of much industry engagement and influence. The nature of engagement that does occur is largely through the utilisation of DUT graduates or WIL students. Engagement occurs most commonly when curriculum issues are raised by staff at interviews of employers during WIL, suggesting that the nature of association with DUT is limited to employment of students or graduates. It is inferred that industry has very little direct input into the curriculum. DUT Advisory Board is considerably under-utilised for its intended purpose of engaging industry on curriculum issues, and its existence is unfamiliar to industry at large. As much as the Advisory Board is the most appropriate avenue to discuss curriculum issues, it has limitations in that its function is not entirely realised. The data generated also resoundingly suggests that industry is fully supportive of an inclusive participation process. Data further suggest that industry genuinely wants to be involved in curriculum discussions, and decisions for reasons ranging from participating to create more relevant course content, to contributing to creation of graduates with more appropriate employability attributes. Participants from industry further intimated that their role remains for on-site experiential learning: they provide the working knowledge to complement the academic knowledge provided by DUT. They also consider themselves to be providers of other facets that contribute to a holistic graduate, and assume further roles such as those of mentors and supervisors. The likely outcomes of their influence would be rapid engagement of graduates within the Civil Engineering field. A symbiotic relationship therefore becomes apparent between DUT and industry, where with more input into the curriculum by industry; a more work- orientated graduate is produced to better serve the needs of industry. The following recommendations emerge from the findings of this study: Since most of industry’s engagement occurs during WIL interviews, it would be prudent if a generic curriculum- based questionnaire is devised. This should be filled in by employers during student WIL visitations by staff in addition to the existing questionnaire. In doing so DUT would be proactive in literally ‘taking curriculum issues to them’. The DUT Civil Engineering Department should target those companies that have an interest in making a concerted effort by enlisting them onto the Advisory Board. From an institutional perspective DUT should be more proactive and advertise the existence of such an entity, created solely for curriculum discussions with the public, and particularly with industry. Assessments, course content and the project component of the programme generated considerable comments from industry that the Civil Engineering Department could take into consideration during the curriculum renewal process.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Data-driven learning (DDL), an inductive teaching approach in which students learn through corpus interaction, has gained recent traction as way to teach specialized vocabulary in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classes. There is little research, however, that addresses how to choose specialized vocabulary for teaching with DDL. This study addressed this gap in research by exploring the potential of a three-part analytical, corpus-based system for determining vocabulary to teach with DDL for a specific context of language use. This system included (1) identifying words that were significantly more frequent in a specialized expert corpus than in a corpus of general English, (2) narrowing to words that showed patterned differences in use between the specialized corpus and a student corpus, and (3) narrowing further to words with salient enough patterns of usage to teach with DDL. This three-part system was applied to the context of civil engineering in order to find vocabulary words to teach civil engineering students with low-proficiency writing skills at Portland State University. For the first step in my analytical system, I found 201 words that occurred significantly more frequently in civil engineering practitioner writing than in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and that met requirements for frequency, distribution, and other criteria. I tested the second and third steps on 45 of these words and identified 14 words that showed evidence of needing to be taught and being well suited to DDL. After reflecting on my process, I found that the analytical system was successful in meeting my goals for finding civil engineering vocabulary for data-driven activities. I also made several observations that may be useful for ESP teachers who are interested in applying this methodology for their classes, the most notable of which were: 1. The system was especially useful for connecting words that are not explicitly civil engineering themed (e.g., encountered or using) to important writing functions that civil engineers perform. 2. Although it provided a systematic basis for vocabulary teaching decisions, the process was generally time-consuming and required complex judgments, which indicated that it may only be worth performing if teachers plan to regularly incorporate DDL vocabulary instruction into their course.

Sustainable development through sustainable engineering is a promising strategy for combating unsustainable patterns of population growth, resource consumption, and environmental degradation. For sustainable engineering to alleviate global problems, however, improvements in undergraduate education are required to equip students with the knowledge and skills needed to engage in sustainable design. Consequently, the goal of this dissertation is to assess and improve sustainability education in civil and environmental engineering (CEE) at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Three phases of inquiry were conducted to (1) examine the current status of CEE sustainability education, (2) use assessment results to develop a pedagogically-innovative sustainability module, and (3) investigate the impacts of implementing the module into select CEE courses on student learning. Several key findings resulted from this work. First, the Sustainability Tool for Assessing Universities’ Curricula Holistically (STAUNCH®) suggested that integration of sustainability into the curriculum was incomplete and favored environmental sustainability. Second, CEE seniors’ conceptual understanding of sustainability, based on concept map results, was found to be generally correct, although limited in comprehensiveness, connectedness, and balance. Third, examination of capstone project reports (2002 and 2011) using the novel Sustainable Design Rubric revealed little change in the students’ sustainable design abilities over the past decade, due potentially in part to students simply “meeting the expectations” of project sponsors. Based on these insights, a five-part, learning-cycle-based sustainability module was developed and implemented in CEE capstone and cornerstone design courses. Higher learning gains for cornerstone students, as compared to seniors, supports future integration of the module into cornerstone design courses. While project results are especially important for CEE at Georgia Tech, other programs and institutions may benefit from the development and improvement of sustainability knowledge assessment tools, as well as the empirically-informed and theoretically-grounded sustainability module.

M. Tech. Education / Investigates the status of Civil Technology practical activities in three South African schools in the Eastern Cape Province. The Civil Technology policy advocates that the integration of theory to practical, where learners should be capacitated with practical skills to enable them to amongst other things, enter the job market upon completion of Grade 12,or apprenticeships that will prepare them for a trade test should they not be willing to further their academic studies.