Teaching a College-wide Introductory Engineering Course Within a Freshman-year Experience

Abstract

IntroductionRetention of engineering students from their freshmen year to graduation is an important issue facing engineering schools today. The academic difficulty of an engineering education takes a toll on enrollment and a significant percentage of students that enroll as freshmen engineers do not reach graduation. Increasing the percentage of students that persevere to graduation is one of the College of Engineering (COE) at New Mexico State University's (NMSU) main goals. The first goal to help students achieve this is the Freshmen Year Experience (FYE) program. Experiential learning methods are described by much of the literature as a way to further engage students in their coursework and to introduce freshman to some of the basic concepts of engineering. A form of "student-centered education" where the instructor acts as a guide to the experiential learning process is preferred over the traditional class lecture format according to Spencer & Mehler [10] . Hixson [4] refer to this as instructor "role-modeling," where the instructor advises and nudges the students through a thought process. The decisions are ultimately made by the students and they are the owners of their solution. The research presented by Ambrose [1] similarly advocates the use of experiential learning opportunities. To better provide students with timely feedback, the in-class methods of peer instruction, case studies, and simulations lessen the slow response time of traditional grading. Introductory level classes are described by Koenig [7] , that help develop and reinforce basic reasoning skills that are critical in carrying out projects, designs, and experiments later on in STEM coursework. These classroom exercises are designed so that they scale up in difficulty. Hixon [4] calls this a "spiral curriculum," and appears to be very useful with engineering design projects.Our FYE plan is based in part on implementing these experiential learning methods in conjunction with the retention strategies developed by the ECSEL coalition, Kalonji & Gretchen [6] . The FYE is only the first year of a complete four year plan for increasing student retention. The FYE transitions in the summer to include internships, employment opportunities, group activities, and pre-advising for the fall semester. Students who successfully make it to their second year will experience continued peer-mentoring in their sophomore course load to include assistance with English, Calculus and Physics. The summer prior to their second year the students are offered the same opportunities as the summer before the first year. Plans for the junior and senior years include students hiring as peer-mentors and providing opportunities for the students to participate in undergraduate research. To achieve our goals the FYE integrates student success strategies into many facets of the student's first year in college. An integral part of this comprehensive approach is the ENGR100 "Introduction to Engineering" course. The data reported in this paper reflects a first pass at our Page 2...

Improving Student Laboratory Experiences through Integration of Instructions, Worksheets, and Computer Code using LiveScripts

“…Many universities utilize MATLAB in a number of laboratory classes, in different departments. These can include disciplines such as electrical and computer engineering [1], freshman year experience courses [2,3], and mechanical engineering [4,5,6]. While the courses in question may focus on programming [7,8,9], many courses use MATLAB more as a means to an end in teaching other material.…”