First-year Engineering Research Articles

Simulation-Based Learning and Argumentation to Promote Informed Design Decision-Making Processes within a First-Year Engineering Technology Course

Analyzing the integration of scientific knowledge to guide decision-making processes supporting design challenges in engineering education is critical. However, effectively engaging in informed design decision-making processes is challenging, particularly in the context of online education. Simulation-based learning can bring authentic design practices to online education, but effective guidance and scaffolding must be provided to learners. Therefore, this research investigates the implications of integrating simulation-based learning with an argumentation framework to guide students in incorporating scientific knowledge into their design decisions, particularly in designing energy-efficient housing. This study took place during online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was implemented within a first-year engineering technology undergraduate course. It aimed to analyze students’ decision-making processes when designing a zero-energy home for a Midwestern city using Aladdin, an integrated CAD/CAE platform that can be used to design a structure and simulate its function within a single system. This study investigates how students informed their decision-making processes in design for energy-efficient homes and the recurring trends in students’ designs related to economic decision making and energy science. The overall results show how cost constraints significantly influenced students’ observation and argumentation processes during their design challenge, highlighting the pivotal role of economic considerations in shaping their decision making. Moreover, the findings underscore the importance of holistic approaches in providing insights into teaching strategies for online learning, particularly in navigating the intersection of scientific and economic factors in design challenges.

Assessing the Gaps between Alberta K-12 Competency Development and University of Alberta Engineering Introductory-level Graduate Attribute Indicators

Canadian engineering education is in high demand for students. The University of Alberta (U of A) internal surveys have shown that the first year of engineering program is often the most challenging due to the greater expectations of knowledge and skills, different learning environments, and higher requirements of independent study skills compared to high school. Hence, high school graduates should be equipped with the competencies and knowledge to be more prepared for their first-year engineering studies, which is critical to their success. Therefore, this paper aims first to explore the engineering-specific high school competencies to enter the Faculty of Engineering, U of A. Further, it seeks to identify the gaps between these competencies and the introductory-level graduate attributes (GAs) in the U of A engineering programs. Using a document analysis method, we compared the ENGG introductory-level GAs with the learning outcomes of high school required courses. The findings indicate that high school courses prepare students for first-year engineering courses in terms of knowledge-based and other competencies. However, despite the alignment, gaps also exist in terms of life-long learning, professionalism, ethics and equity, economics and project management that need to be addressed by the program’s first year. Having these skills developed would better prepare students for the first year of engineering and should be a focus of first-year engineering programs.

Development of Attitudes in First Year Engineering Design

Relatively few studies have been conducted to analyze how design courses change student attitudes towards engineering design. The first-year engineering program at USask includes an introductory design course that focuses on Problem Definition. One of the course learning objectives is the development of positive attitudes towards various facets of engineering design. As part of quality assurance in this regard, a survey tool was developed to assess student attitudes towards design. The survey, conducted in 2021 and 2022, included up to 18 statements. Each student rated their agreement with each statement on a 5-point Likert scale. Results were analyzed by comparing differences in response frequencies from students at the end of 2021 and 2022, and from before and after the design course in 2022. As well, one multiple-choice and two open-ended text responses were gathered and coded for each end-of-course survey. Results from the two cohorts were similar, in spite of some logistical differences between the two years. Also, attitudes across several of the statements were positively and significantly impacted by the design course suggesting that the course is meeting its objectives of developing positive attitudes towards design, and is doing so on a year-over-year basis.

Instructors’ Understanding of Teaching First-Year Engineering Teaming: Characterization and Redirection

Teaming is increasingly important to teach well in undergraduate engineering education. Teams composed of both majority and minoritized students have an increased risk of majority members harassing minoritized members. Instructors of large classes have a difficult time identifying in which teams such harassment is taking place, and knowing what to do to interrupt it. This paper, part of a bigger project grounded in microaggression theory and selective incivility theory, specifically considers what instructors currently do, and indeed whether it is their job to address teammate harassment. We undertook a rough thematic analysis of interviews with instructors of a large first-year engineering course at a large American research-extensive majority-white university in the Midwest. We found instructors adopted an individual-centric model of teaming, intervened mainly in severe instances, and their interventions tended to be subtle. We offer an early version of an alternative model to structure forthcoming training sessions with instructors, graduate teaching assistants, and peer teachers.

A first-year integrated project-based course: Students' experience and engagement working in teams amid COVID-19

The Faculty of Engineering at McMaster University implemented its largest curricular change through the PIVOT. First-year engineering students now take a 13-unit ENGINEER 1P13 that integrates multiple interdisciplinary projects allowing students to apply first year engineering theory and knowledge directly. This paper examines the teamwork and collaboration skills of ENGINEER 1P13 students by analyzing to what extent the course’s pedagogical approach helped students engage with their team, achieve the course learning outcomes and master the related skills. Data from three student surveys show that most students reported a high level of engagement with their team/group and agreed that they achieved the learning outcomes and mastered skills related to teamwork abilities. Also, students valued the opportunity to work in teams to meet new people and improve their overall learning experience. However, students also mentioned they struggled with how to address an imbalance in team member contributions to the projects.

First-Year Project-Based Engineering Design Courses in Canadian Institutions

First-year engineering design courses are fundamental component to most engineering programs, and they provide the backbone for the introduction of engineering students to engineering practice and profession. First-year engineering design courses are also essential to begin the development of an engineering mindset. The purpose of this study is to complete a comparative examination of first-year engineering design courses across Canada. The work was inspired by an interactive workshop delivered at CEEA-ACEG 2022. The workshop was based on a comparative examination of the curriculum and delivery of three first-year design courses at different engineering institutions, including number of students and credits, project types, content integration, resources, and logistics. Informed by the discussion in the workshop, this study expands on the work by surveying instructors of first-year engineering design courses. The preliminary results are presented from a subset of the data collected and demonstrate similarities and differences among the different programs. These results provide a foundation for meaningful analysis and discussion of educational practice in first-year engineering design courses.

"Please may I have some more?" – Assessing Student and Instructor Intersubjective Agreement on Part Marks in Engineering Mathematics

Driven by student requests for more marks (some prefer ‘partial credit’), this paper asks if there is evidence that students adapt to the marking rubrics encountered in universities. Through a weekly handout in a first-year engineering mathematics class, we explore the progress students make in their understanding of how instructors grade. How does student expectation of an unknown grading rubric shift with the accumulation of experience in a course? Through our exploration, we reveal unfortunate findings about how well students adapt, a lot of unanswered questions, a few sources of good news, and promising directions for the research to pursue.

Integrating Stakeholder Interactions into First-Year Design Courses: Perceived Value & Impact on Students

Incorporating stakeholders into engineering design courses is important but challenging. A case-study-based approach of integrating stakeholder interactions into first-year engineering design courses was studied with the hypothesis that students would see value in stakeholder interactions. First-year students in two programs, Systems Design Engineering (SYDE, n=120) and Biomedical Engineering (BME, n=100), completed a beginning and end of term survey to understand their perceptions of stakeholder interactions in their first-semester engineering design course. The vast majority (96 to 98%) of students indicated that stakeholder interactions should persist in first-semester engineering design courses. Both cohorts placed high importance on stakeholders as an information source. However, BME students placed higher value in stakeholder interactions than their SYDE peers. This may relate to stakeholder alignment and interaction modality. While stakeholder interactions were effectively integrated into these courses, future work includes assessing effectiveness in different cohorts and developing a program-level plan for advancing stakeholder interactions.

Thriving in Engineering: A Pilot Peer Mentorship Model for First-Year Students

This paper describes a peer mentorship program piloted in a cornerstone first-year engineering course (ENG 1101: Renaissance Engineer 1) at the Lassonde School of Engineering in York University since fall of 2021. The mentorship program is designed to help first-year students develop the cognitive, emotional, motivational, and relational foundations for success and thriving in an engineering program. Students are brought together in small groups (termed “guilds”) for structured coaching sessions with an assigned upper-year engineering student as a mentor and participate in a total of five sessions, each with their own topic and learning outcomes. The program fosters students’ sense of belonging through participation in meaningful group activities and engaging students in a shared experience. Reflections from students and mentors about the program highlight the importance of building intentional opportunities that promote students’ sense of connection. Program challenges, refinements, and future directions are considered.

Building a guitar amplifier: Accessible, engaging, and project-based audio instruction for students of all academic backgrounds

A challenge in designing first-year engineering curriculum is meeting the needs of a group of students with diverse academic backgrounds. Educators in the field of audio and acoustical engineering are often tasked with simultaneously preparing majors to be successful in their subsequent coursework while delivering a course that is both accessible to and exciting for all students. At the University of Rochester, we offer a survey course that introduces students to fundamental concepts in acoustics, signals, and audio electronics in which we leverage students’ existing experiences with sound and music in a project-based environment. Students complete a series of laboratory exercises where they interact with the science of audio by building a guitar amplifier circuit from scratch. Analyzing a schematic, soldering components, solving equations, seeing waveforms, and HEARING the results of their work, allows all students to engage in the content more deeply than any of these activities in isolation. In this presentation, we will share the specifics of our approach, and provide open-source curriculum in the form of lab manuals, supporting files, and sample PCBs.

Applying the engineering design process to teach the physics course for engineering students using the flipped classroom combined with an instructional design model

PurposeThis study aims to examine the perceptions of students about learning science and physics using the engineering design process (EDP).Design/methodology/approachThe study employed a mixed-methods research design: The quantitative session features a pre–post-test control group study. In the qualitative aspect, the study conducted semistructured interviews for data collection. In the experimental group, the flipped classroom (FC) model and an instructional design are combined to design, develop and implement a physics course using the steps of the EDP, while the conventional method was applied to the control group. The respondents are students of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Cao Thang Technical College in Vietnam for the academic year 2022–2023. The control and experimental groups are composed of 80 students each. An independent sample Mann–Whitney U test is applied to the quantitative data, while thematic analysis is employed for the qualitative data.FindingsThe results demonstrate a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of perceptions about learning science and physics using the EDP, which, when combined with a FC, enhances physics learning for engineering students.Research limitations/implications This study implemented the EDP in teaching physics to first-year engineering students in the Department of Mechanical Engineering using the combined FC and instructional design models. The results revealed that a difference exists in the perception of the students in terms of integrating the EDP into learning physics between the experimental and control groups. The experimental group, which underwent the EDP, obtained better results than did the control group, which used the conventional method. The results demonstrated that the EDP encouraged the students to explore and learn new content knowledge by selecting the appropriate solution to the problem. The EDP also helped them integrate new knowledge and engineering skills into mechanical engineering. This research also introduced a new perspective on physics teaching and learning using the EDP for engineering college students.Practical implicationsThe research findings are important for teaching and learning physics using EDP in the context of engineering education. Thus, educators can integrate the teaching and learning of physics into the EDP to motivate and engage student learning.Originality/valueUsing the EDP combined with a FC designed under stages of the analyze, design, develop, implement and evaluate (ADDIE) model has enhanced the learning of physics for engineering college students.

Problem-Based Learning versus Traditional Learning in Physics Education for Engineering Program Students

Problem-based learning (PBL) is an educational method which involves learning by solving real problems. However, applying a PBL approach to engineering subjects in some cases became a challenging issue. Thus, it is important to determine the best ways in which engineering students can learn physics more effectively and solve problems relevant to their daily lives. The main aim of this study was to compare the final assessment grades in a physics course for students in the engineering program using PBL and traditional learning (TL) methods. The advantages and disadvantages of PBL and TL methods from the practical experience of lecturers are also presented. The study presented data of 460 first-year engineering students taking the physics course at Kaunas University of Technology. The information presented in this study is based on the insights, observations, and individual experiences of the authors as teaching staff. The results indicated that the application of the PBL method allows for enhancement in the teamwork, presentation, and critical thinking skills in physics. However, the TL method promotes the individual learning skills and wider theoretical knowledge in physics of students and is more suitable when the exam only includes closed-ended questions.

Ways of Being Smart in Engineering: Beliefs, Values, and Introductory Engineering Experiences

Common discourse conveys that to be an engineer, one must be “smart.” Our individual and collective beliefs about what constitutes smart behavior are shaped by our participation in the complex cultural practice of smartness. From the literature, we know that the criteria for being considered “smart” in our educational systems are biased. The emphasis on selecting and retaining only those who are deemed “smart enough” to be engineers perpetuates inequity in undergraduate engineering education. Less is known about what undergraduate students explicitly believe are the different ways of being smart in engineering or how those different ways of being a smart engineer are valued in introductory engineering classrooms. In this study, we explored the common beliefs of undergraduate engineering students regarding what it means to be smart in engineering. We also explored how the students personally valued those ways of being smart versus what they perceived as being valued in introductory engineering classrooms. Through our multi-phase, multi-method approach, we initially qualitatively characterized their beliefs into 11 different ways to be smart in engineering, based on a sample of 36 engineering students enrolled in first-year engineering courses. We then employed quantitative methods to uncover significant differences, with a 95% confidence interval, in six of the 11 ways of being smart between the values personally held by engineering students and what they perceived to be valued in their classrooms. Additionally, we qualitatively found that 1) students described grades as central to their classroom experience, 2) students described the classroom as a context where effortless achievement is associated with being smart, and 3) students described a lack of reward in the classroom for showing initiative and for considerations of social impact or helping others. As engineering educators strive to be more inclusive, it is essential to have a clear understanding and reflect on how students value different ways of being smart in engineering as well as consider how these values are embedded into teaching praxis.

A Primer for Design and Systems Thinkers: A First-Year Engineering Course for Mindset Development

Teaching students to think in complex systems and design is presumably intricate, creative, and nonlinear. However, due to the overwhelming number of standardized tools and frameworks, the process sometimes ends up being procedural and deductive. Conformity to rigid procedures loses the intention of creative problem-solving towards tackling wicked problems. This paper proposes a project-based approach to instill the mindsets for those who aspire to be design and systems thinkers through a first-year engineering course. Using the ADDIE model, the instructional design was implemented in three modules focusing on design, systems, and integration for real-world applications. The instructional design was evaluated via course feedback surveys and focus-group interviews. Students indicated positive impacts on creative mindsets, habits of systems thinkers, and interdisciplinary awareness. However, negative comments about the course arrangement such as heavy workload and disconnection between topics were identified. Suggestions from students, challenges faced by the instructors, and recommended practices are discussed. In times of increasing need to reform higher education due to digitization and artificial intelligence, this study provides a timely investigation of a new project-based and mindset-focused pedagogy in design and systems thinking education.

Scaffolding Models in a Project-Based Learning Course- A Case Study

The study investigates the impact of establishing the different scaffolding models toward better percolation of knowledge and skills required to build a functional prototype in a first-year engineering Project Based Learning course. To facilitate students to design and build a mechatronics system, scaffolding students at various project phases is crucial. To cater to the need, scaffolding by the teacher all the time for all the project phases for a large classroom of students was challenging. Thus, there was a need to establish multiple scaffolding models to effectively scaffold students without burdening the teacher. This motivated the authors to establish the five scaffolding models. Data was collected from students and teachers involved in the course to measure the effectiveness of scaffolding models. Student data was collected through focus group discussion, while an interview was carried out with faculty to capture the data. The results reveal that designing multiple scaffolding models helped students to get just in time help to complete the projects and resulted in better design skills. The paper's outcomes help educators design scaffolding models for the PBL course in engineering for a large classroom. Keywords— Design Problems; Engineering Design Process; First-Year Engineering; Project-Based Learning (PBL); Prototyping skills; Scaffolding.

An Effective Virtual Reality Paradigm for Robotic Assembly in First-Year Engineering Curriculum

An effective Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality paradigm is proposed to facilitate introductory robotics course in the first-year engineering curriculum. The AR/VR Application utilization and its impact on the students' learning with respect to robotic assembly and robotic application programming is emphasized in this article. The paper delves into a comprehensive review of the related works presented in the literature. The requirements for the physical assembly and virtual assembly of movable robots are meticulously highlighted. To facilitate course learning a robotic workshop involving steps introduction to robotics, and practical experience on the robot is conducted. The delivery of the course content is made much more effective by inculcating the Virtual experience of the Robotic assembly process. The virtual robotic assembly and manual physical robotic assembly process processes have their own uniqueness and importance and it is left to the students to pick them on a priority basis. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed course is determined by conducting an online quiz, collecting student feedback, tabulating and analyzing the results.The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in creating interest in robotics and related courses among first-year engineering students. Keywords— Augmented Reality(AR), Virtual Reality(VR), Build Your Own Robot(BYOR), Robotic assembly.

INTERACTIVE SPATIAL TRAINING ANIMATES SEX DIFFERENCES IN PERFORMANCE AMONG FIRST-YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS

In a 2 × 2 (sex × intervention) experiment we investigated sex differences in performance gains and transfer after training on a brief intervention that used interactive animation and virtual objects to improve performance on a spatial visualization task. Participants were male and female first-year engineering students at a large public university who scored in the lower 60th percentile of a distribution of their peers on the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test. Compared to the control group, trained participants of both sexes showed significant improvement on stimuli viewed during the intervention. Further, trained participants significantly outperformed untrained participants on a transfer task, with trained female participants significantly outperforming trained male participants. We suggest possible explanations for the lack of sex differences in performance on the trained task and for the significant advantage demonstrated by trained female participants on the transfer task. We propose that a female engineering role model may confer a motivational advantage to female entry-level engineering students.

Enhancing Learner Engagement in Online Education through ADDG9E Model

Abstract—Nowadays, Online Education has been an inevitable choice of practice in the teaching-learning process. Learner engagement is one of the ineluctable challenges faced by the course teachers. For sustaining the learner's engagement throughout the course, teachers have to plan teaching-learning activities such as learning environment, content delivery, active student engagement, assessment, and evaluation. To plan teaching–learning activities effectively, the ADDG9E Instructional Design model, the combination of ADDIE and the Gagne’s 9 events models, has been proposed. Computer Programming CP101x – online bridge course has been offered to first-year engineering students. This course has been offered to improve the problem-solving skills of the learners. The proposed model has been implemented for organizing an online bridge course using the Moodle platform. The experimental results show that the proposed model has improved the learner's engagement, sustainability in learning, formative and summative assessment scores compared to physical classroom teaching. The course feedback shows that how well the learners have enjoyed their learning in the proposed ADDG9E Instructional Design modelbased online bridge course on computer programming. Keywords— ADDIE Model, Gagne’s 9 Events Model, Online Instructional Design, Online Learning, Online Course Design, Student Engagement, Self-Learning, Self-Motivation.

Exploring Key Success Factors in First-Year Engineering Education at Egyptian Higher Education Institutions

Exploring Key Success Factors in First-Year Engineering Education at Egyptian Higher Education Institutions

First-year engineering students’ affective behavior about mathematics in relation to their performance

The present study examines the first-year engineering students’ attitudes towards mathematics, their beliefs and self-efficacy about mathematics, as part of their affective performance, in relation to their mathematical academic performance before and after attending an introductory mathematics course. It aims to contribute on the ongoing discussion about the teaching of mathematics at the level of higher education in engineering programs. First-year engineering students completed a questionnaire and a test after their entrance at the university. Their mathematical performance was examined by using their results at the midterm and the final mathematical mark during AMAT111 course offered at the first semester of their studies. Results indicated that aspects of the affective domain were related with students’ performance, while the predominant role belonged to their previous mathematical knowledge and skills (as learning outcome of the high school education), which undoubtedly need further enhancement. The belief about a formalistic perspective of mathematics and the lack of understanding of the implementation of the mathematical concepts on engineering problem solving situations were obstacles for them on recognizing the importance of attending mathematics courses as part of their engineering studies. Discussion concentrates on the following up steps, which have to be done at the level of higher education in order to face the initial difficulties, which have been identified.