In 2008, the Department of Engineering at the University of Liverpool launched the Liverpool Engineer initiative, which comprises an educational framework incorporating the principles of CDIO to develop multi-faceted engineers ready to meet the professional needs of the 21st century. Active learning is at the core of the Liverpool Engineer learning and teaching philosophy. For Civil Engineering students, the development of open-minded design skills is fostered through a series of three progressive Design-Build-Test projects, introduced in the first year of their academic studies. Students work in their tutorial groups (typically six students) to develop a series of model cardboard bridges, which are designed to carry realistic serviceability and ultimate loads with acceptable deflection and without collapse, respectively. The new Active Learning Laboratory was completed in 2008 and provides an ideal environment and facility for these projects, with an overall capacity for 280 engineering students (all disciplines). The structured progression of the bridge design projects allows students to experiment with and explore the properties of tension and compression members fabricated from cardboard. Their findings are compared with the anticipated loads in the members (derived using computer structural analyses with userfriendly graphics and animation) to allow them to develop a complete bridge structure and to make an assessment of its factor of safety. The truss geometry and member properties of the first „Icebreaker‟ bridge are tightly constrained. For the second and third bridges, the student groups have an increasing degree of freedom to develop their own concepts and structural solutions to the problem. The paper will focus on the student experience and will discuss some problems and pitfalls encountered with their understanding of structural behaviour.
