The Effects of an Orientation Course on the Attitudes of Freshmen Engineering Students

Abstract

Increasing the retention rate of beginning students in engineering is an important goal for engineering education. Our study examined the attitudes of freshmen in regard to the academic counseling they received. Orientation classes have been offered in groups of 40 to students on a voluntary basis, and surveys have been done to examine the effectiveness of these courses in increasing students' commitment to and positive perception of the University. A comparison of students enrolled in the orientation course and students in a control group found significant differences in the positive perception of academic counseling. Those students in the orientation course were more satisfied with the counseling they received than those without this course.

Integrating cohorts to improve student career self-efficacy

“…A number of past studies have examined how introductory courses can serve to improve self-efficacy [5][6][7][8]. Introductory course design, including the specificity related to the chosen major, including projects or lab activities, and assigning team tasks are all capable of improving self-efficacy [9][10][11].…”

Work in Progress: Improving First-Year Retention Through Support and Engagement

“…Many schools facing similar issues have developed programs targeted at first-year students, including seminars (e.g., Montgomery et al, 2003), special courses (e.g., Olds and Miller, 2004;Mourtos and Furman, 2002;Hatton et al, 1998), mentoring (e.g., Meyers et al, 2010), learning communities (e.g., Zhao and Kuh, 2004), and research opportunities (e.g., Courtney and Courtney, 2012). Such programs are typically tailored to the individual institution.…”

Design Centered Introduction: 3 Year Experience With The Gateway To The Aerospace Digital Library

“…In a tightly packed curriculum, it was hard to justify spending several leisurely hours on such a course. In writing this, the author acknowledges that reality can be far better than this, as shown by many teachers in several forms of freshman design experiences [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] . The difficulty, again, is that many faculty cannot imagine this being the case, have negative anecdotes to reinforce their superstitions, and will not devote Page 5.194.1 time to learning otherwise.…”