2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper provides a description and evaluation of an English Composition course integrated into a First-Year Engineering Program. ENG XXX is a hybrid course taught at University X, in which some instruction is provided asynchronously and online, and some instruction is provided in person through visits to students’ first-year engineering course during the second semester of students’ first year in engineering.

ENG XXX walks students through the process of writing a 6,000-word conference-style research paper which culminates in a conference-style presentation at the end of the academic year, at a conference organized by the First-Year Engineering Program. Students are required to write their research papers in teams of three, so the course also places strong emphasis on teamwork and teamwork skills.

This non-traditional, hybrid course serves 450+ students every year. It involves considerable coordination between the English faculty and the engineering faculty, and allows students to experience the importance of communication skills within the context of engineering. Student responses provided as part of a course assignment were used to conduct an initial evaluation of the course and course implementation.

At the end of the spring 2024 semester, students answered several reflection questions about their experience in the course, as part of a required course assignment. Three of these questions were selected for analysis: (1) What is one piece of advice you would give to student teams taking this class in the future? Why?; (2) What was the most difficult, challenging, or demanding thing about ENG XXX?; and (3) What was the best thing about ENG XXX? Responses from 450+ students were qualitatively analyzed. The themes that emerged from this data analysis are presented in this paper, and are used as part of the evaluation of this course.

This paper will (1) describe the course and course assignments, (2) summarize student responses to the reflection questions listed above, (3) identify, based on students’ responses, what has worked well in the course, and (4) identify, based on students’ responses, ways to improve the course. In addition, recommendations for other faculty interested in implementing similar aspects of this course into their own courses will be provided.