but should be required to plan his own method of
presentation, determine for himself what matter shall be in tabular
form and what in narrative form, and plan his own illustrations. Of
course, he should be required to keep neat, accurate, and reasonably
full notes of the laboratory work, and should be held to a high
standard of clearness, conciseness, and correctness in his final
report. Providing the student with tabular forms and sample reports
may lessen the teacher's labors and improve the appearance of the
report, but such practice greatly decreases the educational value to
the student.

=Surveying field-practice.=

In its aims surveying field-practice is substantially the same as
engineering laboratory work, and all the preceding remarks concerning
laboratory work apply equally well also to surveying practice.
Ordinarily the latter has a higher educational value than the former
in that the method of attack, at least in minor details, is left to
the student's initiative, and also in that the difficulties or
obstacles encountered require the student to exercise his own
resourcefulness. The cultivation of initiative and self-reliance is of
the highest engineering as well as educational value. Further, in the
better institutions the instructor in surveying usually knows the
result the student should obtain, and consequently the latter has a
greater stimulus to secure accuracy than occurs in most laboratory
work. Finally, the students, at least the civil engineering ones,
always feel that surveying is highly practical, and hence are
unusually enthusiastic in their work.

=Design.=

When properly taught an exercise in design has the highest educational
value; and, besides, the student is usually easily interested, since
he is likely to regard such work as highly practical and therefore to
give it his best efforts. Instruction in design should accomplish two
purposes; viz., (1) familiarize the student with the application of
principles, and (2) train him in initiative. Different subjects
necessarily have these elements in different degrees, and any
particular subject may be so taught as specially to emphasize one or
the other of these objects.

Sometimes a problem in design is little more than the following of an
outline or example in the textbook and substituting values in
formulas. The design of an ordinary short-span steel truss bridge, as
ordinarily taught, is an example of this method of instruction.
Anothe