2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Universities are increasingly implementing design courses at the first-year level in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines to expose students to design competencies early in their degree programs. These courses are typically deemed "cornerstone design," or "cornerstone" for short, and aid as an introduction for first-year students to engineering design. Outside of the formal design or theoretical concepts required by the students in these courses, they also teach competencies such as multidisciplinary teamwork, time management, and professional skills that are required of them entering the industry post-graduation. Cornerstone can consist of a single semester, two semesters, or a quarterly project, depending on the institution. At a primarily undergraduate, STEM-focused university, the cornerstone course teaches design and STEM principles and culminates in an interdisciplinary hackathon experience. The hackathon format allows for an early college career experience for students to apply knowledge, foster teamwork, and develop design skills through innovative solution generation.
The study examines the impact of prior experiences and major choice on a student's self-assessed motivation, confidence, success, and anxiety before and after participation in this cornerstone hackathon. In this preliminary investigation, the participation of first-year STEM students in a six-hour hackathon event was examined. Additionally, the students' K-12 experiences, demographics, and pre-and post-event self-assessed factors were gathered to investigate the influence of demographics and prior experiences on the self-assessed factors. The project is labeled a hackathon because it involves problem-focused tasks assigned to student participants and necessitates a diverse range of STEM skills to achieve a successful project outcome and provide a positive learning experience for students.
The study results indicate a significant correlation between students' prior experiences and their self-assessed factors. Further, significant correlations were observed between students' demographics and their self-assessed factors. These results can impact the teaching methods in design education and the criteria for team assignments in subsequent iterations of this foundational event and other curricular materials centered on the engineering design process. The results of this study set a foundational element aimed at understanding the impact on first-year engineering students.