Leveraging the ASEE Annual Conference Robot Competition to Increase ECE Recruiting and Retention

摘要

In 2008 a corrective action plan was implemented at the University of Oklahoma to reverse drastic declines in ECE undergraduate enrollment. The ECE enrollment numbers in fall 2008 were 246, but by fall 2014 they soared to 440. The research that went into the plan revealed that a freshman engineering course is a critical place to start. In response, multiple ECE led freshman engineering orientation sections were created that were open to all engineering majors. These courses were found to produce good results in retention and also in non-ECE students matriculating into ECE. In the fall 2014 semester new ECE led freshman orientation sections were created that would utilize many innovative practices. These new sections would use the robotics competition at the 2015 ASEE Annual Conference to set the curriculum and provide motivation for the students to learn. Each section was challenged at the beginning of the semester with creating a robot that could compete in the ASEE Robot Competition and during the course of the semester background knowledge needed to complete the project was provided in hands-on focused lab exercises. This paper describes the curriculum of this course, learning objectives, and how a mentoring structure was established with ECE robotics-based student organizations.