Computational Tools for Teaching Graduate Courses in Geotechnical Engineering

1 Pedro Lamas, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, [email protected] Abstract The Bologna Process assigns new challenges in higher education and in geotechnical engineering courses in particular. The ECTS (European Credit Transfer System), based on the student workload required to achieve the objectives of a program study, implies reduction of contact hours between teacher and student. In the graduate courses of Civil Engineering and Geological Engineering, at Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, New University of Lisbon (FCT/UNL), the programmes of geotechnical disciplines were modified, taking into account this reduced time of classes, putting more emphasis on the process of learning, then on the process of teaching. To search for this effective processes of learning, there has been personal involvement of the authors in the development of stimulating and innovative frameworks that motivate students to do private study beyond taught classes and, at the same time, could give them a better understanding of concepts in geotechnical engineering. Being so, students were encouraged to explore current PC programs to solve geo-engineering problems. Commercial software (student version or easily available) was used to solve didactical examples that are presented in this paper, such as spreadsheet applications with Microsoft EXCEL, PLAXIS and SLOPE/W.