Project Based Freshman Engineering Experience: The Core Course

Villanova University has embarked on a new project-based approach for the required first year engineering experience. The two-semester sequence is divided into four 1⁄2 semester blocks with the first 1⁄2 semester block being the Core Course; this paper focuses on this first block. The Core Course is intended to cover material germane to the 5 engineering programs available at Villanova University (chemical, civil and environmental, computer, electrical and mechanical). This paper focuses on three major topic points: • A discussion on the motivation for the change in the freshman engineering experience; • Lecture details that take a geographically (and internationally) diverse set of freshman from different school systems and different learning backgrounds and provides the university-level engineering background that will enable them to successfully complete the mini-projects in the remaining three blocks in the sequence; and • Project details (both pedagogy and logistics) used in this first block to aid in student’s understanding of the engineering method, the collection and interpretation of data, and the presentation of this data Introduction and Motivation Villanova University has embarked on a new project-based approach for the required first year engineering experience. This project-based course sequence was deemed a practical approach to of end-of-course surveys as well as input from a number of freshmen and sophomore focus groups over the 2006-2008 time frame. These studies indicated that students felt that the previous freshmen engineering experience could provide a better introduction to the various engineering disciplines offered at Villanova University. The studies also indicated that the current previous freshmen engineering experience (a single course in each of the Fall and Spring semesters) was not as effective as it could be. In some cases, the sequence lacked relevance to current engineering problems and practice. The semester project in the fall course was either too challenging or not challenging enough for too many of our students. The previous freshman engineering courses were taught by faculty from the Mechanical Engineering department; besides a large project, the Fall course introduced the students to AutoCAD and SolidWorks, and for orientation and to stimulate interest in the engineering profession, had lectures and laboratory exercises on the five engineering programs offered at the university. The spring course focused on programming (MATLAB, Mathcad, and Excel) and problem solving. While the college enjoys an overall retention rate (freshman to sophomore year) consistently averaging over 80% (Figure 1), it was still felt that improving the freshman engineering experience would keep this rate at a high level, while at the same time providing a more relevant education for the freshman, and would also improve the slightly lower retention rate for underrepresented groups (the university has a common freshman year where student arrive undeclared and choose their major during the middle of the Spring semester).