2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

First-year design programs have gained popularity and offer opportunities to introduce students to the iterative engineering design process at the beginning of their degree [1]. Such courses are often transdisciplinary, allowing students to learn from peers with varying interests and perspectives [2]. Some programs integrate design and communication in first-year coursework, helping students develop various professional and technical skills [3]. Other programs have designated communication instructors as part of the teaching team to effectively teach these skills[4]. To provide meaningful first-year experiences, many design courses are taught with low student-instructor ratios [5]. This, and the large enrollment of first-year students, means whole-school design courses require a large number of faculty, often with diverse professional and academic backgrounds [6].

This work-in-progress examines the differing perspectives of faculty teaching in the first-year design program at a mid-sized private R1 university. All first-year engineering students must complete two quarters of a course introducing the design process and oral and written communication skills. In this course, paired instructors—one specializing in design and the other in communication—teach teams of four students in sections of sixteen students. Many faculty will teach multiple sections over an academic year or in a single quarter. The first-year class size is over 500 students; thus, to maintain the small class size, more than 65 faculty members have taught in this two-course sequence over the past two years.

Faculty are free to adapt their instruction to prioritize content and skill development as they see fit while the students work toward the major deliverables common to all sections (e.g., design documentation, prototype development, and iterative mockup and prototype testing). Because faculty members are afforded instructional autonomy, they can implement and emphasize curricular elements to cultivate specific competencies in their students. The manifestation of pedagogical discretion is primarily evident in the instructor’s emphasis or deemphasis of smaller assignments and the generation of supplementary materials and assignments unique to their section.

The diversity of faculty backgrounds and the anecdotally expected variety of teaching approaches drive the following research questions:
1. How do faculty members address the teaching of professional and technical skills, perspectives, and behaviors in their own sections?
2. What are faculty perspectives on the professional and technical skills, and behaviors students acquire by the end of each quarter of the course?

To address these questions, faculty were surveyed on four key topics:
1. Biographical Information: Instructors’ teaching experience and their role in the program.
2. Teaching Methods: Indicating the ways faculty explicitly address core professional and technical skills.
3. Student Skill Level: Measuring faculty estimation of students’ ability to independently apply these skills after completing the course (Likert-type question).
4. Qualitative Feedback: Open-ended questions for faculty to provide insights into program strengths and areas for improvement.
The list of assessed skills was developed using ABET literature and refined with input from experienced faculty from design and communication disciplines.

Responses to the mixed-methods survey were categorized by considering the faculty members’ background (design or communication) and experience teaching the course to search for common trends. Each skill’s instructor-specific emphasis was self-reported as nominal categorical data, whilst opinions of the level of proficiency acquired by students were recorded with Likert-type data. Qualitative responses were analyzed with inductive coding to uncover themes present in the faculty responses.

Results from this study show the variety of content and skill prioritization that arises in a multi-instructor school-wide first-year design program. This study is part of an ongoing effort to understand the complexities of large first-year design programs that are not specific to any single engineering major. By initially focusing on faculty teaching approaches and perspectives, we aim to develop a holistic understanding of the faculty’s differing perspectives of the skills and competencies students gain across the two-course design sequence. This WIP establishes the groundwork for a comprehensive investigation into the transfer, application, and further development of professional and technical competencies as students progress through their chosen majors.