The First Year Engineering Course At Nc State University: Design And Implementation

Over the past three years the freshmen engineering course in the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University has been substantially redesigned. This paper describes the design, implementation and assessment of the new course. This course has undergone substantial change since 1996, Porter et al. previously reported on what had been implemented prior to 1999. In the past three years, the Freshmen Engineering Program at NC State has continued to refine the course. The approach taken involves four steps: (1) define course learning objectives with constituents, (2) deve lop course content based on learning objectives (again with constituents), in the presence of constraints, (3) assess degree of achievement of learning objectives and effectiveness of content, and (4) utilize assessment data to implement changes which increase effectiveness and efficiency of resources.