The Use of Scaffolding Approach to Enhance Students' Engagement in Learning Structural Analysis

Abstract

This paper presents a reflection on the use of Scaffolding Approach to engage Civil Engineering students in learning Structural Analysis subjects. In this approach, after listening to the lecture on background theory, students are provided with a series of practice problems, each one comes with the steps, formulas, hints, and tables needed to solve the problem. Gradually, with the growing confident to apply the method as a tool to analyze structures, the amount of help provided is reduced, until finally no help is provided at all. Using this approach, only the main background of theory is needed to be lectured. The application of the method to analyze various problems is learned by students themselves by doing the series of problems engineered with gradually-reduced supports. Students' engagement is greatly enhanced, as they are so much involved in the learning process.