RAISING AWARENESS ABOUT INHERENT RESPONSIBILITY TO STRUCTURAL DESIGN THROUGH MULTIMEDIA ANALYSIS OF STRUCTURAL COLLAPSE

The professional activity related to the design, calculation and execution of structures involves an important responsibility, due to the considerable human and material damages that can be caused if, for any reason, a collapse occurs. The complexity of the subject is so great as to make the students to immerse themselves in the calculations so that the overall perspective is lost and students fail to recall the importance of conducting a safe structure. The use of real cases of collapses translates into a way of understanding the scope of this responsibility, and allows the student to know and contextualize the role of the engineer in these situations. The use of multimedia resources (videos, images, simulations, ...) allows to identify and observe with greater clarity the origin of the problem, which is not easy. The main objectives of this work are (i) to use real cases of structural collapses to help the students of these subjects in order to understand the importance of the professional work they are preparing to exercise, (ii) to use multimedia elements for a detailed analysis of each case, relating them to concepts taught in the subjects (instability, fatigue, resonance, constructive processes, ...), and (iii) to learn the role of the engineer in these cases. The aim is for students to internalize the inherent responsibility of structural calculation and to understand that it is demanding subject, since errors can lead to total failure and catastrophes. To this end, multimedia material has been collected from more than 30 cases of collapses, which is being used by teachers to analyse them and link it with contents of the subjects, in class sessions supported by virtual teaching tools. The sessions are especially open to the participation of the students, who usually shows curiosity about what happened and interest in participating in the analysis. The project covers 3 different courses (2nd, 3rd and 4th) of the Bachelor degree in Mechanical Engineering, and also 2nd year of the Master degree, in order to observe the evolution of interest throughout their academic career. 6 different subjects participate in the project, so it concerns more than 300 students. As a first step, this academic year it was tested with a small group of students, from 2nd and 3rd course of the Bachelor Degree. Surveys are used to quantify this interest before and after the activities. The preliminary results of this project show that these activities are appropriate to improve motivation and interest in professional ethics in the field.