Impact of a First- and Second-year Culminating Experience on Student Learning in an Electrical Engineering Curriculum

This paper presents findings from an impact study of a lower division student experience within an undergraduate electrical engineering curriculum. This experience, culminating in the second year of the curriculum, is integrated across multiple first and second year courses and includes elements commonly found in senior-level capstone project courses. An introductory programming course utilizing an embedded platform is the first course in the sequence. The final course in the sequence requires students to design, build, and test an autonomous mobile robot. Through a series of milestones, students systematically complete both the hardware and embedded software tasks required for the project. The final milestone involves an industrysponsored event where the entire student cohort participates in a robot competition. For a number of years, anecdotal evidence has suggested that the course sequence has significant positive impacts on student experience throughout the curriculum. It has been postulated that this experience results in significant knowledge gain, reinforces their decision to pursue a career in electrical engineering, and builds camaraderie amongst the student cohort. A study was conducted to better understand these potential impacts. Part 1 of the study analyzed grades in the project course sequence and compared them to another course sequence that also occurs in the first and second year of the curriculum. Part 2 was a survey in which students and recent graduates were asked a variety of questions regarding the impact of the experience on other courses, on their competency in curricular outcomes, and on their overall experience within the academic program. This paper describes the course structure, the current implementation which has evolved over many years of offerings, and presents results indicating its impact on student performance and learning in the remainder of the curriculum.