First-year Engineering Program Research Articles

Integration of Core First Year Engineering Courses into Sequenced Experiential Learning: The Integrated Cornerstone

Until the beginning of the 2020 academic year, the first-year engineering program at McMaster University was organized as traditional courses to form a common curriculum for all students. The first year core courses were organized as i) Design and Graphics, ii) Computation, iii) Profession & Practice, and iv) Materials. Regardless of which engineering discipline a student enters in second year, the core courses provide a common base for important theory and applications required for the engineering design and development process. The challenge with traditional course organization continues to be concept linkages and attention competition. The purpose of this new approach was to integrate the learning objective of each traditional course into one experiential course through sequential Capstone-style project learning experiences– creating the Integrated Cornerstone. As the name implies, the approach offers the foundational blocks in the engineering student’s education. Focusing pedagogy on a tangible outcomes provides the opportunity to incorporate creativity, self-efficacy, and fosters a sense of community. The Achilles’ heel to a siloed collection of courses offering the Cornerstone approach is that students find themselves immersed in parallel independent projects resulting in unintended distraction. The Integrated Cornerstone merges the core courses learning objectives for better focus of pedagogy. While pandemic restrictions have complicated the quantified comparison of pedagogical approaches between the traditional method of curriculum delivery vs. the Integrated Cornerstone delivery we present aggregate qualitative outcomes of student success. The comparison of approaches and lessons learned for integration will be of interest to other educators seeking better integrated learning for the application of engineering theory in design.

The Relationship between Teaming Effectiveness and Online Students’ Sense of Connectedness in a First-Year Engineering Program

The relationship between team effectiveness and student online connectedness was investigated in a first- year engineering course developed around teaming projects. While team effectiveness has typically been incorporated in learning environments to obtain specific content-related learning objectives or career preparedness outcomes, our goal was to determine if the teaming could also contribute to students’ sense of community and connectedness during virtual courses offered during the pandemic. Our exploratory study determined that several of the teaming effectiveness factors significantly predicted factors from the Online Student Connectedness Survey. We discuss the possibility of intentionally utilizing good teaming practices to enhance students’ sense of community and connectedness to course or programs of study.

SEMI-STRUCTURED DESIGN AND PROBLEM-BASED EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING IN A FIRST-YEAR BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING LABORATORY COURSE

A first-year biomedical engineering laboratory course was created using a problem-based approach, introducing students to the interplay of engineering design and biology in biomedical engineering. Open-ended problems were central to each laboratory module, and were designed to enhance students’ development of high-order learning skills. Although the value of problem-based learning in engineering laboratory courses has been recognized, its implementation in the first-year engineering program presents unique challenges for students who are unfamiliar with the unstructured approach and who are in their early stages of developing discipline-specific knowledge. Immediate feedback scaffolding strategies, including interactive pre-laboratory assessments and team-based quizzes, were implemented in the second iteration of the course to support students’ achievement of learning outcomes, and to improve their perception of their learning experience in a problem-based laboratory. According to preliminary survey results, students attributed the value of problem-based laboratory activities to the acquisition of technical skills, engineering design skills, as well as the development of self-directed ability, and a growth mindset. Results from the second iteration of the course also revealed that students perceived the interactive pre-laboratory assessments and team-based quizzes to be highly valuable. Taken together, our study thus far has underlined the importance of immediate feedback as an effective scaffolding strategy for supporting semi-structured experiential learning in a first-year engineering laboratory course.

Development of a Peace Engineering Initiative within a First-Year Engineering Program

Development of a Peace Engineering Initiative within a First-Year Engineering Program

Crossing Boundaries: Developing Transdisciplinary Skills in Engineering Education

Transdisciplinary engineering curricula prepare future engineers with a holistic understanding of complex real-world problems, and the ability to tackle these problems with knowledge and skills in both engineering and non-engineering areas. What are transdisciplinary skills in the engineering education context? What learning activities can we design and implement to develop students’ transdisciplinary skills in the first-year engineering program? How can we assess transdisciplinary skills and evaluate the instructional effectiveness of these learning activities?The current study is an initial attempt to explore these questions. We introduce a conceptual framework ofusing systems thinking, empathy and metacognition asproxy indicators of transdisciplinary skills, and presentthe learning activities we have designed to developstudent competencies in these areas. In addition, wepropose an evaluation approach that includes a surveyinstrument and formative learning assessment, with which we investigate the relationships among empathy, systems thinking, and metacognitive skills in the context ofengineering education.

Engineering Tourism: Sightseeing across the Curriculum for Non-STEM Librarians

Advice for librarians' professional development sometimes includes encouragement to attend classes, but the benefits for STEM librarians have not been well defined. This article describes a study in which engineering librarians at the University of Vermont and Montana Tech of the University of Montana observed class sessions across first-year engineering programs. The study provided numerous insights into the orientational design of these programs, the scope of the curriculum, building relationships with different groups, the importance of relating instruction to professional success, opportunities for integrating library services, and the ability of non-expert librarians to support STEM programs. This article also provides suggested best practices for an observational project of this kind.

Instrumentation and measurement in a first-year engineering program

The First-Year Engineering (FYE) program at the University of Kentucky (UK) is a three course sequence intended to recruit and retain engineering and computer science students by engaging them in exploration and design experiences. Transfer students are also welcomed into the College of Engineering through a course developed specifically for students entering the College with a previous degree or more than 30 credits in another major. FYE program development started in 2014, a Director was selected in 2015, six faculty were hired in 2016 and the first cohort of students enrolled in Fall 2016. All nine undergraduate degree programs changed their curricula to accommodate the new courses which replaced the individual departmental 101 courses, the introductory computer science course and the UK Core Intellectual Inquiry into Arts and Creativity requirement. In order to appeal to all disciplines, the courses address multidisciplinary global issues and pair computer programming with hands-on sensor and motor circuits. All types of engineers collect data from sensors, analyze the data to make decisions and then command an action as a result. By introducing students to basic sensor, data and actuator circuits and programs, they will be prepared for lab courses and research opportunities in their major with some ability to design new measurement systems.

FIRST-YEAR COMMON ENGINEERING CURRICULUM FOR THE BC POST-SECONDARY SECTOR

Abstract – Demand for engineering education has grown in recognition of its importance to the provincial economy, while engineering education capacity continues to lag. Engineering schools in British Columbia traditionally offer a common first-year of study that provides a foundation of science, mathematics, and engineering design before students specialize in second year. The British Columbia Council on Admission and Transfer (BCCAT) Engineering Articulation committee believed this transition served as a natural transfer point and undertook a year-long consultative process to establish the feasibility of developing a common, first-year engineering curriculum within the BC post-secondary sector.
 This study found that although there exists some diversity within the first-year engineering programs at accredited receiving institutions, sufficient curriculum overlap allowed for a sector-wide common first-year engineering curriculum. This proposed curriculum suggests a content framework for students in all regions of the province to begin the first year of engineering studies at their institution of choice, and subsequently transfer to any of the major research institutions for degree completion.

Multi-Institution Study of Student Demographics and Outcomes in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the USA

Electrical Engineering (EE) and Computer Engineering (CpE) programs have similar curricula, but different demographics and student outcomes. This paper extends earlier longitudinal studies to a larger and more diverse dataset with 90 000 first-time-in-college and 26 000 transfer students who majored in engineering at USA institutions, including students who started in first-year engineering programs, those switching majors, and those transferring from other institutions. Black men and women and Asian men in engineering are strongly attracted to EE when they start in college. Black students and Asian and Hispanic men are attracted to CpE more than other engineering disciplines, but at lower rates than EE. Asian students have the highest graduation rates in EE. EE students are much more likely to graduate than CpE students. Compared to other engineering disciplines, CpE graduation rates are low for women of all races/ethnicities and Black men. Both EE and CpE lose many of those starting the programs, but switchers and transfers compensate for some of the loss. Considering Asian students and White men, switching to EE accounts for the high attrition rate from CpE, but attrition in other populations cannot be explained so easily. Trajectories of student enrollment differ by race/ethnicity. The approach used here could serve as a model for other fields studying their own demographic distributions.

Transforming the First-Year Engineering Experience through Authentic Problem-Solving: Taking a Models and Modeling Perspective

A models and modeling perspective led to Model-Eliciting Activities (MEAs), authentic mathematical modeling problems, being introduced into a first-year engineering program in 2002. A design research perspective then led to iterative improvements in the design of these activities, strategies for their implementation, and strategies for assessing student work to promote effective learning across multiple learning objectives. This paper describes two different research threads that have lead to significant transformation of the first-year engineering experience. The first thread relates to problem formulation. The second thread relates to the dimensions along which instructors evaluate students’ open-ended problem solutions.

Design and Implementation of a Mechatronics Learning Module in a Large First-Semester Engineering Course

Since 2005, the first-year engineering program at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, has been significantly restructured to include more hands-on learning. A major grant (2004-2009) under the department level reform (DLR) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) facilitated this restructuring. A number of hands-on learning modules were developed and implemented within a required first-semester undergraduate course. One of the modules introduced mechatronics. The goal of this module is to introduce first-year engineering students to a portion of the mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer engineering disciplines within a collaborative setting. Interestingly, while the largest portion of engineering students in the United States are enrolled in electrical and mechanical engineering programs, there is a disparity between the percentage of male engineering students and female engineering students within those disciplines relative to the overall distribution of all students among the various engineering disciplines. By introducing all engineering students to mechatronics before students declare their specific discipline, the college hopes to attract more females to programs that suffer from a greater gender disparity than is already found within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. This paper discusses the details of the implementation of the mechatronics initiative and gives student feedback that includes overall perception of the initiative and perception by gender.