2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

China has advanced the reform plan of “Emerging Engineering Education” since 2017. 1457 teaching reform projects involving over 300 universities under the “Emerging Engineering Education” initiative have been approved. In this context, the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) has actively participated in engineering education reform based on experiential learning model. This study investigates the impact of experiential learning programs on the development of practical higher-order cognitive skills among full-stack talents in chip design and manufacturing. Based on the learning circle theory, we adopt an exploratory single-case research method. We interviewed 5 students who participated in the “One Student, One Chip” project initiative by the UCAS, and organized the data collected from multiple sources through the coding process of “open coding, axial coding and selective coding”. We explore and propose the 2 new concepts “experiential learning spiral” and “practical higher order cognitive skills”. It is found that experiential learning is a spiral progression process, higher-order cognitive skills are practice-oriented, and in different learning cycles, different concrete experiences and active experimentation affect the formation of different skills of engineering students in the direction of chip design and manufacturing.