For decades, engineering and technology educators have been deploying hands-on project-based learning activities in freshmen courses, in the hopes of inspiring students, increasing retention, and creating better educated graduates. Some of these educators have also been reporting the results of their efforts through papers published and/or presented in a wide variety of settings. To understand the broad results of these efforts, this paper attempts to answer the research question: "What are the central themes in the literature related to mechatronic-based projects and engagement of first-year engineering and technology students?" To facilitate this discussion, we collected 402 published articles spanning the years from 1990 - 2014, of which 137 were selected as directly applicable to our topic. This effort constituted a configurative review and allowed us to construct a methodically mapped landscape of the topic by applying a code or codes to each source. In this meeting paper we will present the results of this effort, including tabulations of the works that allow identification of the trends and gaps in the literature specific to the categories of Course Level, Content Delivery Method, Retention, Investment Level/Duration, Improvement Process, and Pedagogy. We also discuss our categorization strategies, and present conclusions about the efficacy of these approaches and the areas that appear most fruitful for additional research. In so doing, we hope to lay a strong foundation for future efforts towards improving the education of freshman technology students the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State University.
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