Educators, researchers, and policy makers have advocated student involvement for some time as an essential aspect of meaningful learning. In the past twenty years engineering educators have implemented several means of better engaging their undergraduate students, including active and cooperative learning, learning communities, service learning, cooperative education, inquiry and problem‐based learning, and team projects. This paper focuses on classroom‐based pedagogies of engagement, particularly cooperative and problem‐based learning. It includes a brief history, theoretical roots, research support, summary of practices, and suggestions for redesigning engineering classes and programs to include more student engagement. The paper also lays out the research ahead for advancing pedagogies aimed at more fully enhancing students' involvement in their learning.

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Modern cooperative learning began in the mid-1960s (D. W. Johnson & R. Johnson, 1999a). Its use, however, was resisted by advocates of social Darwinism (who believed that students must be taught to survive in a "dog-eat-dog" world) and individualism (who believed in the myth of the "rugged individualist"). Despite the resistance, cooperative learning is now an accepted, and often the preferred, instructional procedures at all levels of education. Cooperative learning is being used in postsecondary education in every part of the world. It is difficult to find a text on instructional methods, a journal on teaching, or instructional guidelines that do not discuss cooperative learning. Materials on cooperative learning have been translated into dozens of languages. Cooperative learning is one of the success stories of both psychology and education. One of the most distinctive characteristics of cooperative learning, and perhaps the reason for its success, is the close relationship between theory, research, and practice. In this article, social interdependence theory will be reviewed, the research validating the theory will be summarized, and the five basic elements needed to understand the dynamics of cooperation and operationalize the validated theory will be discussed. Finally the controversies in the research and the remaining questions that need to be answered by future research will be noted.