Pedestrian Bridge Application in a Fundamentals of Structural Analysis Course Inside an Architecture Bachelor Program

The paper presents an application of the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) methodology in a structural analysis course taught in English of the third year Architecture bachelor program at Politecnico di Torino (Italy). This experimentation regards a class which is composed mostly of international students, that is, a heterogeneous audience with different background. In general, students struggle with the technical aspects typical of structural analysis course. PBL has been found as a possible solution to this problem in Engineering programs. The aim of redesigning the course is to support students’ learning while evaluating the PBL application in a non-technical context with an international audience. This article describes the structure and the results of the PBL implementation. In particular, the participation has increased compared to the previous academic year in terms of presence during the lectures, interest in the subject, interaction between the lecturer and the students, and exams’ results. These results are encouraging and confirm the validity of the PBL methodology as actually applied.