Do It Differently To Get A Different Outcome: Integrating Content Across Disciplines To Solve An Age Old Problem

Required courses in engineering technology (ET) programs other than ET courses prompt the student question, "why am I learning this?" Students often fail to make the necessary connections between disciplines that enable them to apply the knowledge appropriately in "real world" situations. How many students have taken a speech course, an English course, and a mathematics course only to find that they are unable to link their writing skills to speaking persuasively to analytical analysis and research to prepare an excellent proposal once employed? In South Carolina a new approach to the first year of engineering technology education has been developed and implemented to help students make these important connections. This new approach is producing better results in terms of retention, graduation rates, and diversity. Implementation sites have increased graduation rates more than ten fold, students from underrepresented populations are as persistent and successful as traditional students in engineering technology, minority enrollment has increased, and employer satisfaction has reached a new high. Using research on contextual learners, student retention, and the 21st Century workplace, a new curriculum has been designed that focuses on an integrated, problem-based approach. Two major instructional components are completed: Technology Gateway and the first-year engineering technology core, called the ET Core. Both curriculum components model the workplace through the use of industrial-type problems in the curriculum and student and faculty teams in the classroom. The general education requirements of physics, mathematics and communications are taught concurrently with technology in the context of solving workplace-related problems. The ET Core consists of eleven courses. The Technology Gateway serves as a pre-engineering technology curriculum for slightly under-prepared students. The Technology Gateway integrates the study of mathematics, communications, and technology (three courses) around industry-type problems, providing relevant, hands-on learning experiences, and addressing career exploration. Curriculum products and evaluation data may be found at www.scate.org. Introduction Students often fail to make the connections among the various courses within the engineering technology curriculum. Particular difficulty arises with the general education courses of physics, mathematics, and communications (English and speech). An engineering technology instructor P ge 978.1 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education too often finds that he or she must spend time teaching mathematics or physics to enable students to have the necessary academic tools to move forward with their study of specific content in engineering technology. If one can assume that the mathematics and physics instructors have covered appropriate content and that students made acceptable grades in these pre-requisite courses, then why is the knowledge not transferring in a useful way in the new environment with engineering technology applications? Similarly, an engineering technology instructor may assign a report, presentation, or analysis to students who have acceptable grades in English or speech courses taken in previous semesters only to find that the students do not appear to know how to apply what they should have learned. For example, an essay on Shakespeare last semester often fails to translate into a well-documented and presented proposal for a solution to an industry problem. A new approach to teaching and learning has been developed to address all of these issues: building links between subjects, making learning more relevant, and increasing student retention. SC ATE Curricula and Results With a grant from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program, a unique curriculum has been developed that enables students to make the connections between academic disciplines while building teamwork and communications skills beginning their first semester. Developed by technical college faculty and published by the South Carolina Advanced Technological Education Center of Excellence (SC ATE), the new curriculum has increased student retention to 75%-100% from semester to semester and increased graduation rates more than 10 fold from historical rates i . Table 1. Sample data from Florence-Darlington Technical College Retention rates Fall 2003 to Spring 2004 75.0% (36 of 48 students) Graduation rates Pre-ATE curriculum 1998, 1999, and 2000 cohorts 12.0% (statewide, N=1614) 29.2-66.0% (avg. 40.7%) Length-of-time to graduation ET students not in ATE ATE students '98-00 cohorts 2.0-7.0 years (avg. 3.2) 2.0-2.4 years (avg. 2.3) Diversity Pre-ATE curriculum 2002-2003 with ATE 2003-2004 with ATE 15% African American 31% African American 33% African American From Fall 2002 to Spring 2003, Piedmont Technical College in Greenwood, South Carolina, another SC ATE curriculum implementation site, experienced 100% retention of students from first to second semester (31 students). Although 100% retention is a rare result and results vary by semester and by college, retention from semester to semester has rarely fallen below 75.0%. The curriculum reform designed and implemented by the SC ATE Center of Excellence completely re-ordered and connected physics, mathematics, communications—general education courses—to engineering technology by using problem-based learning. Industry-based problem scenarios presented in an introductory engineering technology course are used as the vehicle to connect, or integrate, the disciplines. One of the most fundamental changes with the reform is P ge 978.2 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education teaching mathematics "just-in-time" to allow a student to begin physics in the first semester. This requires a mathematics instructor to teach concepts in a very different order than outlined in mathematics textbooks and to spiral back time and again to concepts at higher and higher levels until all competencies are achieved. Another change is a re-ordering of the physics syllabus to cover electrical topics before mechanical topics so that the difficulty of the related mathematics increases more gradually throughout the SC ATE ET Core curriculum. The final major change with the ATE approach is that content is taught from application to theory as opposed to the more traditional approach of theory to application. Students begin with a problem scenario and then determine what they know and need to know to solve the problem. Problem scenarios have multiple solutions, and students work in teams throughout the entire ET core curriculum to formulate and propose solutions to the problem. Individuals are personally accountable for discipline content knowledge and for contributions to the team solution and associated presentations. Instructors also work together as a team to coordinate instruction and to assess student projects. Teams generally meet weekly to discuss the progress of students and to plan the sequence of instruction for the coming week. Instructors are routinely in the classroom at the same time only when students are making team presentations that are jointly graded by the teaching team. Students enroll in all four ATE classes simultaneously unless exempt from a course within the ET Core because of previously earned credit. It is not essential that courses in the ET Core be scheduled in an uninterrupted block of time, but this type of scheduling helps keep students focused. Senior projects and capstone courses often "pull it all together" for four-year college engineering or engineering technology students who persist to become seniors. For two-year technical and community college students, the time frame of opportunity for faculty to help with this process is much shorter. In addition, the two-year college student is very likely to be a contextual learner for whom relevance of study is very closely linked to retention through graduation. ii SC ATE ET Core curriculum helps put the pieces together for beginning engineering technology students beginning with the first semester of study. The result is that student success and persistence improves, and students enter the second year of study with all prerequisite skills in place. The SC ATE curriculum approaches the education of technicians in a very different, non-traditional way and is achieving very different results. For example, the curriculum makes it possible for first-semester freshmen to begin the study of physics concurrently with the study of mathematics. Traditionally, mathematics is a pre-requisite requirement before taking physics. As an added bonus, the SC ATE curriculum inherently addresses many of the new accreditation requirements of the Technology Accrediting Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (TAC of ABET) iii . As a result of the success of implementation of the SC ATE curriculum at a number of colleges in South Carolina, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System and Delmar College in Corpus Christy, Texas have both chosen to adapt and implement the SC ATE model for use with their students. In Kentucky, a five-college pilot project is in progress with plans to expand the curriculum state wide. The Kentucky model uses problem-based learning in physics integrated with developmental mathematics and English courses, computer applications, and workplace readiness skills (SCANS iv competencies). In Texas, a college consortium lead by Del Mar has adapted the Tec