2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
The Evolution of an Interdisciplinary Case-Based Learning First-Year Course
Presented at First-Year Programs Division (FYP) - Technical Session 1: Course Design
Students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have traditionally taken their required core classes in first-year; these are typically pass/no-record courses and courses with hidden grades so that first-year students get the opportunity to get acclimatized to the demanding educational system. In Fall 201, MIT decided to also offer first-year classes which would help students explore different majors and programs without the need to commit to them. In Summer 2020, well into the COVID-19 pandemic in the Unites States, the New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) program decided to offer such an exploratory course remotely in Fall 2020, with the aim of introducing first-year students to each of the five interdisciplinary threads in the program: Advanced Materials Machines; Autonomous Machines; Digital Cities; Living Machines; and Renewable Energy Machines. This course, SP.248 NEET Ways of Thinking, is a pass/no-record course. Engaging and attracting students’ interests were emphasized in the design and delivery of the course. In this paper, we describe the design, implementation, and evolution of this three-unit course from Fall 2020 through to Fall 2022 and its shift from remote to in-person modalities. From Fall 2020 through to Fall 2021, 79 first-year students completed the course, with the Fall 2022 class still ongoing. With one hour allotted to a weekly class, and two hours allotted to students out of class, the lead instructor and co-instructors designed a modular curriculum with challenge-based learning pedagogy. Apart from the first and last classes, implementation consisted of five two-week sections, each one centered on a challenge in one of the five NEET threads. Each section was coupled with one of four approaches for problem-solving, namely, algorithmic thinking, creative thinking, systems thinking (coupled with two tracks), or making. Student assignments involved: (a) in-class individual training assignments, practicing methods, tools, or techniques belonging to a specific problem-solving approach, (b) out-of-class application assignments, involving the application of said methods, mostly in teams, and (c) out-of-class individual reflections where students rated their progress with and gave examples for the approaches to problem-solving they had learned in class. These assignments allowed instructors to conduct summative and formative assessment, tracking student progress while also allowing students to track their own progress. The shift to in-person modality took place in Fall 2021 and has remained since. As a result of lessons learned from the Fall 2021 implementation of the course, the Fall 2022 course curriculum now includes a new type of out-of-class assignment-preparation, most application assignments start during class rather than after class, and training assignments were removed altogether. In this paper, we describe the design of the initial remote curriculum and remote classes, as well as the design and implementation of the in-person iterations of the course. We also detail what we learned from each iteration of the course and how we applied those lessons in subsequent iterations. Finally, we provide suggestions to instructors and programs aiming to provide first-year engineering students with introductions to approaches for problem-solving through active learning and interdisciplinary learning opportunities.
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Cong Cong Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Mr. Justin A. Lavallee Massachusetts Institute of Technology [biography]
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Dr. Gregory L. Long Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology [biography]
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Nathan Melenbrink Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Dr. Amitava 'Babi' Mitra
http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-0282-7880
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
[biography]
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