2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This WIP paper describes ongoing efforts to better understand the impact of a community-inspired design project for first-year engineering students.

Engineering programs often seek to engage their students in authentic engineering practices in order to better support student learning. This is often seen in the later years, through industry-sponsored capstone projects, cooperative educational experiences, and more. However, first-year engineering students often have limited opportunities to engage with authentic engineering practices due to the typical focus of first-year engineering programs, as they seek to establish a foundation of skills and knowledge for later success.

Given the impact of authentic experiences, we sought include a community-inspired design project within our first-year engineering program. This FYE program is a common first-year program at a small, rural, private institution. The course is a two-semester sequence and the enrollment is approximately 200 students. In the second semester, students complete semester-long team-based design project where they identify a need, scope the problem, ideate possible solutions, build prototypes, test, refine and ultimately present their design and functional prototype at an end-of-semester design showcase.

During spring semester 2023, students sought to develop something to aid a person with some kind of disability. In order to help students identify the needs from that group, students were given the opportunity to travel to local care facilities, schools and employment locations to take tours and talk to critical stakeholders. These community partners also served as resources during the semester, and as evaluators during the end-of-semester design showcase.

This work seeks to better understand the impact of this experience on students. This is currently being investigated through quantitative and qualitative measures. Initial data was gathered from a pre-/post- survey of all students, in this case the Engineering Design Expectancy Value Scale (EDVES). The EDVES is based in the expectancy-value theory, and is used to investigate students’ expectancy of success and their values, specifically around engineering. The EDVES data is currently being analyzed and will be used to inform the development of a focus group protocol. This focus group will seek to delve more deeply into the student experience as we seek to better understand the impact this experience has had on students. Additionally, the work will inform further research regarding this and other community-inspired design projects.