Browsing by Author "Carlos Vielma, Juan"

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    Impact of Microteaching on Engineering Students' Communication Skills
    (2018) Fernando Herrera, Rodrigo; Carlos Vielma, Juan; Munoz La Rivera, Felipe
    In current educational processes, it is common to find that students make use of oral presentations with the purpose of exposing a specific topic within the contents of a subject. These types of presentations are also intended for students to learn or improve oral presentation techniques, which generally enrich their communication skills. However, these activities are usually carried out without prior preparation or without well-defined terms of reference, obtaining different results, even within homogeneous groups of students. The objective of the paper is focused on determining the effect of microteaching on engineering students' oral presentation techniques and improve communications skills. To measure its impact, three courses of different levels of the civil engineering career were selected (152 students), separating in each of them two groups of students. Each group of students has been asked to prepare different oral presentations. The first group of students prepared the presentation in a traditional way, while, the second group of students prepared the presentation as if it were a microteaching session. The oral presentations of the groups were evaluated, finding that the microteaching has a favorable impact on the improvement of the communications skills of the students.
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    Intensity Measure Based on a Smooth Inelastic Peak Period for a More Effective Incremental Dynamic Analysis
    (2020) Carlos Vielma, Juan; Cristina Porcu, Maria; Lopez, Nelson
    The Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) assesses the global collapse capacity of a structure by plotting its maximum inelastic response, obtained through a non-linear time-history analysis, versus the scaled intensity of different input earthquakes. The seismic intensity is often measured through the spectral acceleration at the fundamental elastic period. However, this can produce highly variable results. An alternative method is presented in this paper that relies on the elongated period, calculated either from the Fourier spectrum of the acceleration at a target building point (inelastic peak period) or from a smooth Fourier spectrum (inelastic smooth peak period). By referring to a reference reinforced concrete building and to a set of 10 spectrum-consistent earthquakes, the paper presents the results of a wide investigation. First, the variation in the elongated period as a function of the seismic intensity is discussed. Then, the effectiveness of the proposed method is assessed by comparing the IDA curves to those obtained through the elastic period or through approximate values of the elongated period given in the literature. The results show that the alternative IDA procedure generates curves with less-dispersed collapse thresholds. A statistical analysis shows significant improvements in the results when the inelastic smooth peak period is adopted.