Work in Progress: Design, Implementation, and Assessment of a Summer Pre-Collegiate Program at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

摘要

As new experiments and design-based projects are envisioned, they must be evaluated and assessed before they become part of the curriculum. Initially, we introduced such new items to a small group of the Harvard College students, but as the demands for new experiments increased, it became difficult to have a thorough evaluation through the small sample of students. We decided to engage a different student body of diverse backgrounds by establishing a pre-collegiate program. This program attempts to prototype and develop multiple new active learning initiatives before integrating them into the full curriculum. Indeed, the program became a valuable platform to develop, to experiment, and to evaluate new exercises, which has been shown to help increase interest in engineering professions. The outcome of the yearly program helped modify and enhance our formal offering for the college students.