Designing A Sustainable And Dynamic Problem Solving Class For

As the fields of engineering expand and introductory courses become more compressed, it has become a greater challenge to structure first-year classes to prepare students adequately both for the remainder of their formal education and for the workplace. We review the objectives of firstyear classes and some of the traditional methods used in teaching them. We also introduce our attempts in the last few years at developing a sustainable and dynamic first-year electrical engineering class at Iowa State University. Discussion of classroom, laboratory, and out-of-class learning is included, along with some of our results.