A Creative First-year Program to Improve the Student Retention in Engineering

Abstract

In this paper, we study the effect of a new first-year program on student retention rates in engineering. First-year engineering students face unique challenges attending a university. In fact, research shows that the dropout rate among first year students is the highest in engineering programs. To be able to increase retention rates, it is important to understand the reasons engineering students are not completing their programs. This is a rising concern in all engineering programs across the nation. We believe that the lack of hands-on, team-based experiences in a typical first-year engineering curriculum is one of the main reasons students leave the program after completing their first year. Furthermore, it is difficult for the first-year students to connect the concepts of math and science with engineering. Therefore, we need a first-year engineering curriculum that can fill the gap between the fundamentals of abstract math and physics and the application of those fundamentals in solving engineering problems. Thus, we have created a first-year learning community as a solution to low retention rates in engineering. In this learning community, the first-year students take the following courses together: • An interdisciplinary freshman experiences course, in which we teach the concept of "Design-Build-Test-Improve-Collaborate" to the students. The students take the ownership of their group projects, while working together and building friendships that last. • An appropriate Math course (Calculus or Pre-Calculus), which is specifically designed to address the applications of math in engineering. • An English composition class, which focuses on "Writing in Engineering". The main goal of this research is to improve the retention rate of first-year engineering students, by developing a first-year engineering curriculum that can provide additional support and unique learning opportunities in students' entry-level classes. Introduction: Faculty in the College of Engineering and Applied Science (CEAS) at the University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver) have developed a new engineering program for first-year students. The program is titled the Engineering Learning Community (ELC) and is designed to support incoming freshmen engineering and pre-engineering students. In this paper the methods, results and conclusions of the first two academic years of the program are presented. The ELC program was piloted in the fall of 2016 (2016 ELC) and was expanded and run again in the fall of 2017 (2017 ELC).

Three Years of the Urban STEM Collaboratory

“…Additionally, instructors of the ELC courses work together to ensure that content is coordinated. The ELC at CU Denver has a history longer than the Urban STEM Collaboratory, and ELC participation correlated positively with improved outcomes for students [5], [6].…”

Comparing Student Outcomes From Four Iterations of an Engineering Learning Community

“…Specific to engineering, the use of hands-on collaborative design projects in the first year is also believed to be an effective method to increase student engagement, success, and retention [8]. Grounded in this research, faculty members at a large public urban research university developed an optional program for incoming first-year engineering students called the Engineering Learning Community (ELC), which has been reported on elsewhere [9], [10]. The ELC was first implemented in Fall 2016 and has been iterated each academic year since based on student feedback, best practices, and eventually an S-STEM scholarship from NSF [11].…”

Studying Changes using Concept Maps in First-Year Students' Understanding of the Engineering Design Process

“…Most of the assessments of such first year courses have focused on students' motivation, retention, selfefficacy, engineering identity, etc. [4][5][6][7]. Assessment of the design process knowledge has taken the form of surveys; close-ended questions such as multiple choice questions; open-ended questions such as reflections and essays; talk-aloud protocols; performance of final designs; design reports; etc.…”