Introduction to Engineering Through Service-Learning

Kazmer, David O.; Duffy, John; Barrington, Linda; Perna, Beverly

doi:10.1115/detc2007-34491

Cited by 7 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…2, pp. 18-41, Fall 2008ISSN 1555 More extensive questionnaire and interview results for both students and faculty are available in other papers Kazmer et al, 2007;Barrington et al, 2007;Bhattacharjee et al, 2008). The purpose of this paper is again to provide a more extensive description of projects incorporated into primarily engineering science courses, which is relatively rare, it appears from the literature.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Service-Learning Projects in Core Undergraduate Engineering Courses

Duffy¹,

Barington²,

Moeller³

et al. 2008

IJSLE

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The College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) has integrated service-learning (S-L) into many of its core required undergraduate courses over the last three years. Projects that meet real community needs and that help students achieve academic objectives in these core courses are percieved to be difficult to create, but, in this paper, projects for 35 different undergraduate required courses are summarized to help faculty, staff, and students develop S-L projects for their own courses. Faculty at UML were encouraged to “start small rather than not at all.” Courses and projects include, for example, a first-year introduction to engineering course in which 340 students, divided into teams, designed and built moving displays illustrating various technologies for 60,000 middle school students that every year visit a history center that is part of a national park. Another example is a sophomore kinematics course in which student teams visited local playgrounds to assess their safety using deceleration, force, and impact equations learned from the course. Junior heat transfer courses focused in analyzing heat loss and making suggestions for heating system savings for a local food pantry, a city hall building, and a community mental health center, as well as for the university itself; these analyses were developed and presented to the stakeholders. Sophomore student teams from the materials course presented findings to the staff of a local textile history museum to help it begin updating its displays on recent developments in materials. Junior fluids, junior circuits, senior microprocessor, senior design of machine elements, and senior capstone design are having students design and build various parts of an automated canal lock opener for a local national park. Many of the projects are low-cost and can be implemented by individual faculty members without the requirement of a formal institutional program. These S-L projects are integrated into a wide variety of core courses (and not just design courses) and represent typically from 10 to 20 percent of the grade.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Service-Learning Projects in Core Undergraduate Engineering Courses

Duffy¹,

Barington²,

Moeller³

et al. 2008

IJSLE

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“…These findings should be of interest to engineering educators, as first-year engineering students take a heavy load of courses in science and math departments, and the dropout rate is typically highest in the first year. Since our data, in this paper and previous papers [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] , show that S-L has a positive effect on retention, it may be to any College of Engineering's benefit to advocate for S-L in the core courses required in other departments. Why should science faculty be concerned about S-L in their courses?…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As shown in Figure 7, the average number of projects done by engineering majors per year is 70% greater than the average number of projects per year done by science majors. It appears from previous analysis that more experience with S-L gradually improves the outcomes for students [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] . The causal relationship here could be reversed, of course: a higher regard for S-L among engineers could be driving the higher rates of implementation.…”

Section: Impact Of S-l On Likelihood Of Continuing In Major (Persistementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The goal was to have students exposed to S-L in on average one course in each of eight semesters during their engineering program with an overarching aim to graduate better engineers and more engaged citizens. Previous papers have summarized earlier results [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] . The original motivation for attempting this service-learning program was rooted in the findings of classic studies in which service-learning was shown to be effective in a large number of cognitive and affective measures, including critical thinking and tolerance for diversity, and leads to better knowledge of course subject matter, cooperative learning, and recruitment of under-represented groups in engineering; it also leads to better retention of students, and citizenship 2 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Student Experiences in Service-Learning: Engineering vs. Sciences

Willard-Schmoe¹,

Duffy²,

Reynaud³

et al.

2013 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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The cognitive and affective benefits of service-learning (S-L) for students have been well documented, and S-L has become more common in many disciplines, including engineering, the health sciences, and education. Opportunities in the core sciences, however, seem sparse. This paper compares the attitudes of science majors and engineering majors toward S-L through quantitative analysis of survey responses. The goal is to examine student experience and learning in the context of other factors that might influence participation in S-L, such as institutional support, faculty attitudes, and the intrinsic level of applicability of course material to community issues. In the 2011-2012 academic year, 162 students in 9 courses in a College of Sciences participated in S-L projects and were surveyed about their experience. These responses are compared to those of 811 students in 33 courses from the College of Engineering, who completed the same survey; 93% of engineering students surveyed had done S-L that semester and/or previously. Compared to science majors, engineering students reported a significantly (5% level) stronger positive effect of S-L on their persistence in their major, their interest in the subject matter of the course, their ability to plan and carry out a project for the community, and their ability to address complex, open-ended problems. Some conjectures can be made about the reasons for the difference: valuing applied work over theoretical work is part of the engineering identity, and makes S-L a rewarding experience for engineers in particular; institutional acknowledgement of the value of S-L in the College of Engineering has a positive effect on faculty's involvement with, and thus students' reception of, the projects; engineering course material is intrinsically more applicable to community issues than science course material.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Do Students Think About Service-learning in Required Engineering Courses?

Duffy¹,

Barrington²,

Reynaud³

et al.

2012 ASEE Annual Conference &Amp; Exposition Proceedings

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Service-learning (S-L) has been integrated into an average of 30 engineering courses every year since 2004 in five undergraduate departments. Forty-three faculty members have tried S-L, over half the engineering faculty. In 2010-2011, 1267 students (out of an enrollment of 1600) engaged in S-L projects in 33 courses contributing an estimated 49,500 hours to the community. This approach to trying to develop better engineers and more engaged citizens was motivated by the growing body of research showing widespread benefits of S-L, the meeting of academic objectives through addressing real community needs in credit-bearing courses. But what do the students who are part of this program think about S-L? In this study surveys of student views were collected and analyzed. In general, the students are significantly positive in response to S-L. For example, two-thirds agree in principle with combining service and academic coursework. On average they agree that learning and interest in subject matter as well as professional skills are all improved with S-L. Two-thirds agree that S-L has helped keep them in engineering. Forty percent of those who knew about the S-L program said it was one of the factors for their coming to the engineering school. Significant large differences were found comparing female and male responses, with females more positive toward S-L. Over 75% of students indicate that service should be an expected part of the engineering profession. The implication is that service should be an expected and integrated part of the engineering curriculum.

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Introduction to Engineering Through Service-Learning

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Service-Learning Projects in Core Undergraduate Engineering Courses

Service-Learning Projects in Core Undergraduate Engineering Courses

Student Experiences in Service-Learning: Engineering vs. Sciences

What Do Students Think About Service-learning in Required Engineering Courses?

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