Engaging First-Year Students with a Hands-On Course using Student-Driven Projects

Francis, Lorraine F.; Orser, David; Bazargan, Kia; Mantell, Susan C.; Feinberg, Joshua M.; Holmes, Russell J.

doi:10.18260/1-2--32718

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…CSE 1012, Project-Based Inquiry, is a two-credit elective course for second-semester first-year students in the College of Science and Engineering (CSE) [15]. It is designed to be accessible to all majors in the college, spanning the physical sciences, engineering, and math.…”

Section: Cse 1012 -Project-based Inquiry -Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovating Through a Pandemic: Zooming in on the Sustainable Lessons Learned in Engineering Education

Orser,

Francis,

Sartori

et al.

2022 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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Necessity is the parent of invention. Everyone in higher education experienced that proverb firsthand these past two years. Now, it is time to understand which of those inventions should live on and which will only be a footnote. Our need drove major educational redesign --our need was the catalyst --with online learning our only option, we developed new approaches to meet our students' learning, engagement, and retention needs. Project-based design courses were particularly challenging, owing to their specific mix of student collaboration and design-and-build pedagogy.This evidence-based practice paper investigates the pivot to the pandemic world of online-only availability and what can be retained from the experience to enhance student learning in future engineering education courses. First, it looks at the necessary changes to an experiential project-based inquiry course for first-year students. Second, this paper looks at the adaptations in a microcontroller-based first programming course with a final design project. Both courses are moderately large (~100-200 students/year) and are enrolled by a wide variety of science, engineering, and design majors at the University of Minnesota (a large public research university.)Three key adaptations from these two courses show potentially lasting promise. The first is utilizing individual projects where students collaboratively support each other's projects (from ideation to implementation). The second is the use of static, responsive, and teleconference-based video submissions for project check-ins, reports, and design reviews. The final is using online communications tools, including Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and particularly the Discord service.Student ratings of teaching, comments, usage reports, and self-reflections are analyzed. While the data are far from conclusive due to pandemic impacts, they give us confidence that these changes helped students and faculty weather the pandemic storm and provide us with innovations that we can harness in a more normal environment.

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Section: Cse 1012 -Project-based Inquiry -Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovating Through a Pandemic: Zooming in on the Sustainable Lessons Learned in Engineering Education

Orser,

Francis,

Sartori

et al.

2022 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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“…Hands-on team-based open-ended design projects in freshman engineering courses have been shown to significantly improve student retention due to the benefits of active hands-on learning, self-directed acquisition of knowledge, development of skills and confidence necessary to succeed in engineering and a growing sense of community [1,2]. These open-ended design projects range from highly structured [3] to theme-based [1,2] to free choice [4,5]. Combining entrepreneurial thinking and maker technology, student-driven free-choice open-ended design projects allow students to generate their own idea, take ownership of their design project, and results in significant gains in creativity and entrepreneurial intentions [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Open-ended Design Projects Motivate First-year Engineering Students?

Wang

2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access Proceedings

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This complete research paper examines students' situational motivation responses to open-ended design projects with varying degrees of autonomy control in a freshman Introduction to Engineering course. Four sections of the course were given different project themes with different constraints on scope and materials. The Situational Motivation Scale (SIMS) survey, an instrument to measure four types of motivation (intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, external regulation and amotivation) based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT), was administered weekly to the students enrolled in the four sections during the nine-week openended design project. A Basic Needs Satisfaction Scale (BNSS) survey was given at the end of the semester to measure the degree to which three basic psychological needs, autonomy, relatedness, and competence, were satisfied. Quantitative analysis reveals that the open-ended design project with the least constraints prompts more positive self-determination compared to the one with the most constraints. The provision of choice and control has a more prominent impact on female students' motivation than on male students. The perceived need satisfaction of competence may play a role in shaping students' motivational responses.

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Integrating cooperative learning principles into the engineering design process: A mixed-methods study at first-year undergraduate engineering

Baligar

Kandakatla

Joshi³

et al. 2021

2021 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)

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Engaging First-Year Students with a Hands-On Course using Student-Driven Projects

Abstract: and the 3M Chair in Experiential Learning in the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Her research is focused on the field of materials processing. She has developed several courses and authored a textbook.

Cited by 4 publications

References 15 publications

Innovating Through a Pandemic: Zooming in on the Sustainable Lessons Learned in Engineering Education

Innovating Through a Pandemic: Zooming in on the Sustainable Lessons Learned in Engineering Education

Do Open-ended Design Projects Motivate First-year Engineering Students?

Integrating cooperative learning principles into the engineering design process: A mixed-methods study at first-year undergraduate engineering

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