Active Teaching, Active Learning: Infusing The Design Process In A First Year Course

The overall goals of most first-year engineering design courses are to introduce students to the engineering design process through hands-on learning activities, to familiarize them with the various disciplines in engineering, and to inspire and instill an appreciation for the engineering profession, its ethics, and practices –all with the hopes of improved retention. At Northeastern University, our team of instructors has developed a set of classroom activities that illustrate each step of the engineering design process though exercises which dynamically engage the students in each of the progressive course topics. Not surprisingly, students have been very responsive to this approach and emerge from the course with a reportedly higher capability to remember and apply the concepts having been actively involved in simultaneously learning and practicing them. A variety of course assessment measures –both formal and informal– support the notion that students involved in active learning practices regard the instructor as significantly more effective, report to have learned significantly more, and rate the overall course significantly higher relative to students in cohort sections that have not experienced the same level of directed hands-on learning.