Evaluating the effectiveness of implementing active learning opportunities for first year engineering students who are taking math, physics, and chemistry

摘要

Undergraduate engineering students are typically required to take introductory math, chemistry, and physics concurrently with their first-year engineering curriculum. According to previous studies, success in these core courses is an integral part of a successful engineer's training and development, both in their pure content as well as the introduction to a variety of problem solving techniques. These subjects are studied in order to provide the groundwork necessary to develop an effective engineer. However, one theory behind low undergraduate retention in engineering is disinterest in these core courses. With this as the basis of this study, we suggest that students who enroll in engineering are most looking forward to the engineering aspect of the coursework, and are thus surprised at the high volume of what they perceive to be non-engineering (and therefore irrelevant) content from core courses in their first semester of their undergraduate degree. This is what we take to be a major contributor to disinterest in, and potentially departure from, the engineering discipline as a whole for first-year engineering students