Active-Learning-Based Engineering at a Community College: A Key to Student Success

This paper describes an introductory engineering course utilizing active learning strategies and standards-based grading. This first-year course for engineering and technology students at a community college emphasizes working in teams to complete hands-on activities using EXCEL and structured programming with MATLAB. Initial assignments involve using EXCEL to display and analyze data from Ohm’s Law and the speed of sound in air. The next assignment requires distance measuring with ultrasound and designing an ultrasonic range-finder. In the remainder of the assignments over the final threequarters of the semester, MATLAB is used as a structured programming language to first control the movement of a stepper-motor rotor and then to identify different translucent materials from their visible light spectra as measured by a spectrometer. A final project combines the steppermotor rotor with spectroscopy to automatically identify different oils by their spectra produced with a tungsten lamp. Oral communication expertise is a very empowering skill-set to possess and being able to work well in a group and to deliver a presentation are highly prized job skills. To further reinforce the learned concepts and to incorporate another valuable skill-set, students are required to deliver over the course of the semester three presentations of their projects. Standards-based evaluation is used to assess each student’s submissions. Standards for each week’s submissions are published at the beginning of the semester and reemphasized as needed. As the course has a goal of facilitating learning, and encouraging the mastery of new skills rather than penalizing mistakes, resubmission of assignments that have not reached the required standard is allowed and encouraged. During the first four years of this course, Supplementary Instruction (SI) with SI Leaders was gradually introduced and is now incorporated into all sections of the course including adjunct instructor offerings. To document student success, data on student achievement in the course has been collected for twenty-two sections of the course over a span of four and one-half years. Data on course completion rates for this course will be presented and compared to course completion rates for other engineering courses at the community college which do not have SI and to the course completion rates for all courses at the community college. Longitudinal data on student persistence in engineering at the community college and on engineering students transferring to the university will also be presented.