Abstract:
Civil engineering enrollment and education are towards the mode of broad-category, and thus it is urgent to build a batch of interdisciplinary and comprehensive professional courses to meet the need of broad-category education. Sponge city means a city works like a "sponge" that absorbs, stores, seeps, and soaks water when it rains, and "releases" and utilizes the stored water when needed. Sponge city involves water system, building system, road system, and underground space system. Its design and construction require the knowledges and techniques from civil engineering, hydraulic engineering, architecture, urban and rural planning, landscape architecture, and environmental science. Therefore, the courses on sponge city meet the educational objectives of broad-category, i.e., wide vision, solid foundation, strong practical ability, and diversification. However, the existing courses on sponge city have the problems of incomprehensive teaching content, low student participation, and insufficient ideological content. Since 2017, Tsinghua University has opened the course of introduction to sponge city for undergraduates majored in the broad-category of civil engineering. After five years of teaching practice and reform, a systematic curriculum system and teaching methodology have been formed for the introduction to sponge city with the characteristics of broad-category, in which the depth and breadth of the course content are well balanced. The teaching team is composed of professional faculties, industry experts, and staff from the renovation campus management center. The ideological contents are included in the different teaching process. The course of introduction to sponge city is suitable for the mode of broad-category.