ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: The next generation of engineers, faced with rapidly deteriorating infrastructure, is destined to face many difficult decisions in maintaining and preserving our civil infrastructure systems. The Intelligent Sensing for Innovative Structures Research Network of the Canadian Network of Centres of Excellence (ISIS Canada) has, for more than ten years, been a recognized world leader in the development, advancement, and application of fibre reinforced polymers (FRPs) and structural health monitoring (SHM) in infrastructure applications including bridges. These technologies are now recognized as important tools for bridge construction and repair. However, ISIS Canada recognizes that these important technologies will not become common place until the broader civil engineering community is made aware of their benefits and applications. Clearly, a key group that will play a role in shaping the future of bridge maintenance, safety, and management, is the next generation of civil engineers and engineering technologists. As such, ISIS Canada has developed a series of Educational Modules on FRP and SHM technologies for use in undergraduate engineering and technical college curricula. ISIS’ goal in producing these modules is to enable and encourage the teaching of ISIS technologies in educational curricula where they are not currently covered. The modules have been developed to allow seamless integration into various existing courses with minimal effort on the part of the instructor. Teaching resources consisting of lecture notes, presentations, worked examples, case studies, and sample assignments and laboratories have been developed and are now available. This non-research paper presents a brief overview of the educational modules that have been developed by ISIS Canada and which are now freely available for use by all interested parties. The philosophy, objectives, and content of the toolkits are presented, along with examples and illustrations, in the hope that these materials will be taken up and used by the civil engineering education community.
