Development And Assessment Of A Freshman Seminar To Address Societal Context

ABET Criterion 3 mandates 11 assessable outcomes (lettered a-k) to ensure that engineering graduates have the nontechnical skills and context to practice as responsible professionals. A perennial problem in freshman retention is lack of exposure to engineering before students decide to switch to another major. Many freshman engineering programs and courses focus on problem-solving and design, outcomes c and e. As a result of this effort, many successful models exist. Nonetheless, retention of freshmen in engineering remains a problem. In this paper, we describe development of a seminar course to address other ABET Criterion 3 outcomes in the freshman year, particularly global and societal context (h), contemporary issues (j), and lifelong learning (i). Objectives-based course design was used to develop activities directed toward these outcomes. Assessments of both the pilot and the full program involving all USC engineering freshmen are presented. Improvements made and future plans will also be discussed. Introduction The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) EC 2000 Criterion 3 mandates 11 program outcomes common to all engineering degree programs seeking accreditation to ensure that engineering graduates have the nontechnical skills and context to practice as responsible professionals. A perennial problem in freshman retention is lack of exposure to engineering before students decide to switch to another major. Many freshman engineering programs and courses focus on problem-solving and design, outcomes c and e. As a result of this effort, many successful models exist, but retention of freshmen remains a problem. Similar introduction to engineering courses exist at the University of Southern California (USC), but as 10 different discipline-specific courses in 8 departments. (Three-quarters of incoming engineering freshmen already have majors, while the other 25% take a general introduction to engineering course that surveys the majors.) These courses feature design projects and other forms of active learning to varying degrees; approximately 50% of the freshman class completes a design project in their introductory course. Like most science and engineering courses, the focus is on technical content, resulting in dense courses with little room for the addition of societal context and other less technical topics. Thus, the decision was made to create a new interdisciplinary course for students from all engineering majors. The goal of the Engineering Freshman Academy seminars is P ge 10444.1 Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education to provide a framework for students to see how the challenging technical content in their other courses will be applied later to creative careers which impact society. Engineering students are often motivated by practical significance, and these seminars provide broader context for their required math, physics and chemistry courses. A key element of the courses is small class size, enabling faculty to facilitate original team projects. In the four introduction to engineering courses which feature projects, the section size is 50 or more students. Each team uses an identical set of raw materials to meet identical design specifications. These projects have powerful instructive value in the context of discipline-specific content, and students greatly anticipate testing of the final products. However, limitations in class size and learning objectives prevent these courses from addressing perceptions of engineering as an inflexible discipline. In contrast, the interdisciplinary nature, small class size, and guest speakers of the seminar course directly address attrition due to perceptions of engineering as a rigid and uncreative field. Table 1 below illustrates the different focus of the seminar course with respect to ABET Criterion 3 outcomes. It is clear from this chart that existing introduction to engineering courses address many of the technical criteria, while the seminar courses provide students with context. An important factor in approval by the curriculum committee was illustrating the lack of overlap between existing and proposed courses. Table 1. ABET Criterion 3 outcomes addressed in existing introduction to engineering courses and the new societal context seminar. Existing Introduction to Engineering Courses New “Engineering Academy” Seminars (a) an ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering (b) an ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data** (c) an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs* (d) an ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams (e) an ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems (e) an ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems (through “brain-teasers”) (f) an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility* (g) an ability to communicate effectively* (g) an ability to communicate effectively* (h) the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context (i) a recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning (j) a knowledge of contemporary issues (k) an ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice *These criteria are addressed in some, but not all, introduction to engineering courses. **Design of Experiments is typically covered in upper-level courses for which the department’s introduction to engineering course is a prerequisite. P ge 10444.2 Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education Description of the Pilot Course In Fall 2003, two sections of the pilot Engineering Freshman Academy course were offered as a 2-unit special topics course. The course was graded credit/no credit and did not fulfill any requirements other than free electives. Each section met twice a week on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. During summer orientation sessions, new freshmen with space in their schedules were encouraged but not pressured to enroll in this experimental course. By the end of the summer, when most electives had closed, this course remained an option for all students. Final enrollments for the two sections were 13 and 25 students, respectively. (The later time slot fit more students’ schedules.) Guest speakers were frequently invited to speak with students on a variety of topics including life as an engineer, current construction projects on campus, entrepreneurship, art and engineering, and robot choreography. The instructors often invited the other section to their class to hear invited speakers, but students’ tight schedules often made attendance difficult. A common meeting time was strongly recommended by the faculty for future semesters. Each section also attempted a project related to the course themes. The larger section was broken into teams who completed reports on different energy sources and published the information, links, figures and animation to a web site 1 . The smaller section attempted two smaller projects for a local nonprofit shelter: installing solar panels and building a composting area. Complications (including evacuations from seasonal forest fires) prevented the community service projects from being completed, but important lessons for balancing freshman projects with other coursework demands were learned. Student Feedback Feedback was obtained principally from two focus groups with students from both pilot sections present at each session. The students were asked about several aspects of the course, including content, project scope and management, and scheduling. The main points voiced by the students in the pilot section are enumerated below: 1. Far and away the most enjoyable aspects of the course were exposure to guest speakers and getting to know engineering faculty and students in a small-class setting. 2. Students preferred to meet once a week for the entire year because they missed the interaction in spring and felt there wasn’t enough content to sustain meeting twice a week. 3. When asked about cohorting the course with math and assigning peer mentors to each section, students were indifferent. They made it very clear that study sessions and other out of class events should be completely optional. (It is interesting to note that many of the students participating in the focus groups were later hired as mentors the following year.) As retention in engineering is the ultimate goal of this course, the retention rate of this pilot group was compared to that of the entire engineering freshman class. The freshman year return rate (the percentage of students entering as engineering freshman who return P ge 10444.3 Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education next fall for their sophomore year) was higher for the students in this course: 95% versus 86%. There may have been some degree of self-selection on the part of students taking this course, but the numbers were promising enough to proceed with a scale-up to include the entire incoming freshman class the following year. Data from other sources also supported expanding this program for Fall 2004. At the end of the 2003-04 academic year, all USC engineering freshmen were invited to complete a survey of their experience (32% response rate). Students were asked whether they had definite plans to continue in engineering and if not, why not. The most frequent types of responses dealt with perceptions of engineering as an inflexible, uncreative, boring field: • Loss of interest in engineering or required courses (26%) • Lack of creativity in engineering/ p