2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This full paper presents teaching and learning approaches to offering engineering courses at a regional campus of a large midwestern university. Teaching strategies and resources provided for students to be successful will also be presented in this paper along with some guidance and best practices. Many universities invest their resources to explore teaching pedagogies that best fit the needs of their students. Universities that offer programs at regional campuses ensure consistency of the curriculum, however, there are challenges associated with offering programs with different demographics represented at the regional campuses. The purpose of this paper is to: a) present strategies that help support learning in the first two years of engineering courses, b) share student attitudes and performance toward the resources offered at the regional campus, and c) share some of the best practices adopted by the instructors to ensure rigor and consistency of the coursework at the regional campus.
The curriculum for the two courses covers the fundamental concepts and provides an opportunity for students to explore the applications of circuits in the real world. In a normal learning environment, these courses tend to be difficult due to higher expectations for problem-solving, math, and scientific concepts, and adding external factors such as the pandemic adds more complications. The focus of this research is to study the first- and second-year engineering courses and present the strategies that help address the challenges associated with delivering the course content and supporting the needs of the students.
This paper also assesses the impact of campus resources on student learning. With learning comes attitudes, behavior and belongingness and this paper will delve deeper into understanding whether the campus resources support the students with their learning. The paper will also present teaching strategies that the instructors have adapted to facilitate learning.
Campus resources that will be assessed include academic success center, health and wellness program and advisory and retention services. Teaching strategies include the identification and evaluation of flipped classrooms and active learning to support teaching in various modes, restructuring the content, and utilizing alternative methods to assess course goals will be discussed in this paper. This paper provides an opportunity to learn from the unique experience, develop skills to address the various skill levels of the students at regional campuses, and support students and faculty with a variety of academic needs.