Teaching structural engineering concepts in a civil engineering course based on a didactic game

This research analyzes a methodology of non-traditional teaching, based on a didactic game applied into teaching structural engineering concepts within a Statics course —part of a Civil Engineering program—, in which students performed structural analyses in trusses and their respective support systems, by constructing small structures, to later compare results with structural analyses based on theory. Two groups were conformed, where the control group was taught based on traditional teaching lectures, and the test group, to which a didactic teaching methodology based on the structural game developed in this research was applied. For the analysis of both groups, non-parametrical statistical analyses were conducted, along with a qualitative analysis. The statistical analyses evidenced that the didactic methodology proposed here showed to be more efficient for teaching structural concepts, obtaining a high degree of acceptance from students, according to the qualitative analysis carried out, which would motivate its use in other engineering courses