Enhancing Engineering Education: Learning To Solve Problems Through Service Learning Projects

Over the last few years, concerns have escalated among many national organizations over whether today’s engineering students are being adequately prepared for future challenges; globalization, sustainability, complexity, and adaptability. To address this situation, the National Association of Engineers (NAE), the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) have all generated reports aimed at reforming the existing engineering curriculum. As a result, the NAE’s Engineer of 2020 1 , ABET’s Engineering Criterion 3 (EC 2000) 2 , and ASCE’s Body of Knowledge (BOK) 3 all aim at shifting the existing paradigm of engineering curriculum towards a more well-rounded education. The commonality among these three documents is improving students’ problem solving techniques. The future will inevitably bring unanticipated crises; engineers will need to identify the problems and collaboratively formulate innovative, feasible solutions. This research hypothesizes that service-learning can serve as a mechanism that will allow students to develop the necessary problem solving skills. To investigate this hypothesis, an education assessment instrument is employed to examine whether students who have participated in service-learning projects have stronger analytical, practical, and creative abilities than students who have only been exposed to the conventional “classroom” education.