Analyzing Longitudinal Performance from Multi-course Alignment for First-year Engineering Students: Calculus, Physics, and Programming in MATLAB

Liron, Caroline; Steinhauer, Heidi

doi:10.18260/p.23555

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The courses are offered as per the concept of "static time allocations" with a fixed timetable with a set amount of time scheduled for each course, each week (Al-Holou et al, 1999). This structure is preferred to the concept of "course blocks" or "course pairs/triads", for example: mathematics, physics and programming in MATLAB (Liron & Steinhauer, 2015). While course blocks, pairs/triads can help provide explicit integration of curriculum content, the need to undertake a number of courses simultaneously can reduce the opportunities for enrolment flexibility, particularly for part-time students.…”

Section: Time Sharingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementing an Integrated First-Year Engineering Curriculum with Mixed Teaching Approaches

Howell¹,

Hall²,

Emerson³

2021

AJEE

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Griffith University offers Engineering programmes over two campuses in South East Queensland, Australia. A large proportion of students are the first in their families to attend university, with many from low socio-economic backgrounds. In 2017, Griffith moved to a trimester system, and the School of Engineering and Built Environment restructured the first-year engineering curriculum to provide an improved engineering experience focusing on key educational outcomes for its diverse student population.This article describes and evaluates the new integrated first-year curriculum, which includes a mix of traditionally taught, partially experiential, and fully experiential courses. The curriculum structure is discussed, and the outcomes evaluated in terms of student achievement, progression, and satisfaction. Findings of this evaluation indicate that teaching staff have a crucial role in ensuring courses are well received, traditionally taught mathematics courses do not appear to be meeting the needs of the students, and that ‘C’ is unlikely to be a good choice for a first programming language for engineering students. However, the restructuring shows some preliminary success in terms of increased retention when coupled with proactive outreach. Further research into student perceptions and performance across courses with different teaching approaches is recommended.

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