Ac 2007-1478: Introducing Civil Engineering Analysis through Programming

This paper describes a course in computer programming that is being offered to freshmen and sophomores in civil engineering at NC State. Visual Basic (VBA in Excel) and MATLAB are being used as the programming languages. Much of the learning occurs through reverse engineering and imitation. Typical civil engineering problems are used to present the programming concepts. Especially in the instance of VBA, students learn how to combine the use of spreadsheet functions with VBA code. The paper includes an overview of the course and examples of the materials covered and the teaching techniques employed. General thoughts are also presented about the directions in which programming education may be headed in the future.