2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work-in-progress paper is focused on assessing first-year engineering student perceptions in instructional effectiveness for several key fundamental engineering skill topics; compared between two different iterations of the same course, but with different Cornerstone projects. At the J. B. Speed School of Engineering, all engineering students are required to take a two-course introduction to engineering sequence. The first course, Engineering Methods, Tools, & Practice I (ENGR 110), includes introduction and practice in skills fundamental to the engineering profession. The second course, Engineering Methods, Tools, & Practice II (ENGR 111), involves interdisciplinary student teams expanding on and applying these skills by means of a hands-on Cornerstone project. ENGR 111 takes place in a 15,000 square foot makerspace and features pedagogy in numerous institutionally-identified fundamental engineering skills.

Each of these aforementioned skills are practiced in ENGR 111 through both discrete instruction as well as integration with a culminating Cornerstone project. For instance, early in the semester, students are exposed to the basics pertaining to 3D printing technology – in addition to training in how to properly covert 3D CAD models into files that the 3D printers (utilized in the course) can read and use to create the modeled part. The developed understanding and skills in 3D printing is later utilized by students during course design challenges in addition to semester-concluding team demonstrations of respective Cornerstone projects.

As alluded to, the engineering system that a Cornerstone project represents may vary amongst different iterations of the ENGR 111 course; and the focus of this paper is specific to two different semesters with dissimilar Cornerstone systems. The Cornerstone utilized during the Spring 2022 semester (Project 1) was a bench-scale windmill generation system. Alternately, the Cornerstone utilized during the Spring 2023 semester (Project 2) was a bench-scale water filtration system. At the end of each of these semesters, students were asked to complete a survey ranking perceived effectiveness for six of the key skills practiced during their ENGR 111 experience. Specifically, students were required to provide a forced-choice ranking (“Rank the following ENGR 111 topics that you feel were most EFFECTIVE in helping you deepen your understanding of the fundamental skills, knowledge, and qualities of an engineer”), in which a ranking of “1” was deemed most effective, down to a ranking of “6” for the topic deemed least effective. The six topics included in the survey were: Teamwork, Technical Writing, 3D Modeling/Printing, Design, Circuitry, and Programming. The purpose of this study is to assess the potential impact of interchanging Cornerstone systems on student course perception(s) holistically. Preliminary results show that, for the fundamental topic of engineering design, there is a statistically significant difference between the rankings of the two cohorts.