Freshman Engineering Design Experiences: an Organizational Framework (original) (raw)
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Forging New Links: Integrating The Freshman Engineering Curriculum
2001 Annual Conference Proceedings
The School of Engineering at Western New England College is redesigning its traditional core curriculum to provide Freshman engineering students with a more integrated and challenging educational experience. We began this evolutionary process by creating two new courses for the Fall 2000 semester-a new four credit hour course called Introduction to Engineering and a one credit hour Engineering Seminar. The content of the new Introduction to Engineering course focused on learning the engineering design process and some of the tools (such as graphics, CAD, and various computer packages) needed to support that design process. This course was designed with a significant portion of its content devoted to hands on exposure to engineering design. The students experienced the entire design process twice during the Fall semester using RoboLab by LEGO-DACTA as a platform to solve engineering problems. In the one credit hour Engineering Seminar, students learned strategies needed to be a successful engineering student (such as time management, test taking strategies, and oral and written communication skills) and were acquainted with various aspects of the engineering profession through trips to local industry and seminars given by practicing engineers. The Introduction to Engineering course was broken into four identical sections, each with fewer than 25 students enrolled. The faculty member teaching the section also served as the academic advisor for the students, allowing the faculty members to better advise students on their academic and professional pursuits. Faculty coordination and cooperation were cornerstones to the successful delivery of course materials. The new courses and curriculum structure were a success because the freshmen were able to demonstrate an understanding and ability to use the design process to solve engineering design problems.
2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Freshman engineering students often begin their studies with limited, imprecise, and minimally informed conceptions of "engineering design." A deep understanding of this term, however, is vital to an informed awareness of what engineering practice might involve and what engineers see themselves as doing. Textbooks can provide authoritative definition for the student, but these formalisms are (1) challenging for freshman students with limited engineering experience to engage with and (2) fail to capture the complexity of engineering design practices, especially in different disciplines and cultures. In this paper, we examine the efficacy of an activity, developed for a freshman engineering design course that is intended to deepen and enrich students' understanding of these terms by asking them to categorize various artifacts as works of engineering design. Starting with a simple binary question-yes or no-they move to a planar assessment-and finally to a comparative exercise as complications are introduced into the artifact set. Analyzing their pre and post-activity definitions and student reflections on the activity allows us to explore the impact of the exercise on the students' understanding of and engagement with the concept of "engineering design."
2009
An investigation into the impact of a simple team design experience in teaching the engineering design process is described. The design experience occurred early in an Introduction to Engineering course after a single lecture on the engineering design process. The design activity, necessarily simple at this stage, consisted of designing, building, and testing a drag racer, constructed from LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT parts and powered by a single rubber band. Assessment of the value of the experience focused not only on gains in student perceptions of knowledge of and confidence in applying the engineering design process, but also on actual gains in knowledge, as judged by written responses, and on the use of the engineering design process, as judged by student design step logs. Student learning was assessed through questionnaires at the beginning and end of the laboratory period. The questionnaires addressed both student knowledge and student confidence levels. In addition to assigning n...
2010
As both a student and teaching fellow in an Introductory Engineering Design class, experiences and observations have allowed me to see the many benefits of the course’s design project requirement. For many young engineers who chose their major based on an interest in math and science, the design project provides their first encounter with synthesis and evaluation, two skills that distinguish the engineering profession from the natural sciences. The design project requires that students utilize their knowledge and comprehension of math and science to inexpensively and efficiently build something to accomplish a set objective given a series of problem constraints. The design project also requires students to evaluate and reflect on not only their own work, but the work of their colleagues in the class as well. The skills of synthesis and evaluation later become crucial as students progress through their years as upperclassmen and enter the research or industrial fields. My own experie...
Exploring The Engineering Profession A Freshman Engineering Course
2005 Annual Conference Proceedings
The engineering curricula for BS degree programs at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) were recently revised. The major objectives of these revisions were to improve the quality of the programs offered, increase student retention, and enhance the engineering student experience at the freshmen level. A common freshman course, "Exploring the Engineering Profession," was introduced into each engineering program's curriculum at UTSA. The course contains special features designed to enhance the educational quality at the freshmen level, improve student retention, and provide design experience. It is a first course in preparing students for future engineering practice. An assessment process is in place to evaluate the effectiveness in meeting course objectives. This paper will describe in detail the course content and present the assessment results.
2008
Over the past few years, Computer Science and some Engineering disciplines have suffered from a decrease in student enrollment, poor retention, and low women and minority representation. We suggest three issues with first-year courses that contribute to this trend. First, students find it difficult to see how their assignments and course material relate to real-world applications. Second, students tend to perceive engineering as an individual endeavor requiring little interaction with peers. Last, early engineering assignments are often overly constrained, possibly to ease grading, allowing minimal room for student creativity. In this paper, we present a model for an introductory freshman-level course that helps address student enrollment and retention issues. Our course is based on three tenets: (1) the course draws problems from, and teaches about, an interesting and relevant domain in which students already are familiar, (2) the course encourages teamwork and peer communication, ...
Ac 2007-151: Inside the Classroom: Challenges to Teaching Engineering Design in High School
2007
The advances in engineering, particularly over the past few decades, have transformed the daily lives of people. This, in turn, has captured the attention of students at all grade levels. The fascination with technology has generated increased interest among students at an early age, and motivated some to study the field of engineering. It is not too early to start building the foundation for engineering education at the high school level where curricula are being modified to increase students' familiarity with engineering. The objectives of this research were to evaluate the experiences of a high school teacher who developed an innovative engineering program and also to prepare a rubric to guide future teachers who want to teach engineering in their classrooms. An introductory engineering course was offered as an elective and taught by a mathematics teacher who was also an engineer with prior industry experience. It was composed of two one-semester components with hands-on design activities. Eighty-six male and four female students in grades 9, 10, 11, and 12 participated. The data was collected through observations and videotapes of the classes. NVivo qualitative research analysis software was used to code the observation notes and to reveal patterns in the data. At the end of this research project, even though the instructor had limited resources, he was able to meet many of the challenges that he faced in creating and implementing the new engineering program. However he did not sustain the students' interest with several hands-on design activities, such as building an airplane, a tower, a bridge, guest speakers, field trips, readings about the design process, and team presentations, Mr. Q. was not able to pay enough attention to some aspects of the class which inhibited the success of the program. For example, the video presentations or activities were selected to reflect the interests of the students, as indicated by student questions or discussions. Gender and minority interests were not explicitly taken into consideration. For example, most videos focused on disasters resulting from engineering mishaps videos that might show the relevance of engineering to society. Furthermore, difficulties were encountered because of grade level differences in maturity, or mathematics and science backgrounds. This was because criteria and pre-requisites were not established for activities, and did not provide enough explanation about the roles of group members.
New directions in freshman Engineering Design at the University of Maryland
2008
The University of Maryland has a well established, project-based "Introduction to Engineering Design" (ENES 100) course which is taken by approximately 750 freshman engineering students each year. This paper explores the formation of this course through the NSF sponsored ECSEL program, with an emphasis placed on the evolution of this course over the past two decades.
2009 39th IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, 2009
This study focuses on freshman attitudes and beliefs about engineering in a newly introduced engineering curriculum that emphasizes holistic design experiences to portray the discipline of engineering. To precisely measure these constructs, a well documented survey instrument (PFEAS) was employed. The two comparison groups were: the new design-based sequence (DS) and the previous traditional sequence (TS). The study was conducted at a time when both the sequences were available for direct comparison. Data were collected twice (pre-and post-), and changes in groups' attitudes were examined with repeated measures analysis of covariance models. We have found that freshmen join the program with positive perceptions about engineering. Students in the DS group have higher ACT scores, enjoy math and science the most, do not believe engineering to be an exact science, and have stronger parental influence in selecting engineering as a major. We did not observe appreciable group differences in how attitudes changed over time; perhaps one semester of engineering experience was not enough to effect an appreciable change in freshman attitudes. Our study forms the foundation for a longitudinal study to track attitudinal changes for the complete cycle of the design sequence. This formative evaluation will help to further understand and improve the curriculum design efforts.
Building a Framework for Engineering Design Experiences in High School
Journal of Technology Education, 2014
The teaching of engineering design at the secondary level can help students develop critical-thinking and teambuilding skills and provides a platform for the integration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects (Wicklein, 2006). Furthermore, the teaching of design in high school settings has several cognitive advantages including developing engineering habits of mind, problem-solving skills, and the development of system thinking skills (Householder & Hailey, 2012). Although researchers and curriculum developers agree on the benefits of introducing engineering design into high school settings, there is a lack of literature proffering a framework or structure for the successful infusion of engineering design experiences in high school settings. In response to this void in the literature, the National Center for Engineering and Technology Education (NCETE) solicited positions papers from prominent educators in the field outlining a framework for engineering design experiences in high school. NCETE is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded collaborative network of scholars whose mission is to build capacity in technology education to introduce engineering design and other related concepts to high school students (Hailey, 2005). The inception of NCETE coincided with a paradigm shift in technology education to develop a more engineering-focused curriculum (Wicklein, 2006; Gattie & Wicklein, 2007). This call for a new focus was not without its problems, including addressing professional development needs for in-service and preservice teachers, lack of alignment with state standards, determining authentic engineering design experiences, and assessing the engineering design experience (Householder, 2011). In an effort to address these needs, NCETE invited six positions papers whose results would provide fodder for future conversations regarding engineering design in high school settings. Collectively, their responses provided us with emergent themes that begin to outline a structure to support the infusing of engineering design experiences in high school settings.