2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As a civil engineering professor at a northeastern private university, the first author has been exploring effective strategies to enhance students’ sense of belonging, teamwork spirit, and class engagement over the past two years, focusing on a first-year engineering design class, a first-year introduction to construction management class, and a junior-level structural analysis class. Three major categories of interventions implemented in these three classes in Fall 2024 and Fall 2025 semesters include classroom interaction, active teaching and learning, and varied assessment formats.

The classroom interaction activities included fun team-building activities and “Fast Friend” conversations. The active teaching and learning methodologies implemented comprised think-pair-share, the use of physical models, project-based learning, and student-led mini-lecture. Before Fall 2025, assessments in structural analysis class consisted of regular homework and exams; in Fall 2025, it shifted to a combination of partially graded homework, open-book in-class quizzes with open discussion, and exams.

For both first-year classes, anonymous pre- and post-surveys assessing students’ sense of belonging, teamwork spirit, and class engagement were administered at mid-semester and the end of the semester. In addition, direct assessment data for the structural class - including midterm and final exams potentially influenced by the interventions - were compared between the intervention semester (Fall 2025) and prior non-intervention semesters (Fall 2024 and Fall 2023). Statistical t-tests were utilized to analyze survey responses and performance data.

Preliminary results indicates several key findings: (1) class interaction activities are more effective for first-year students than higher-level students; (2) students showed enhanced engagement and understanding when working with the physical model directly by themselves than observing instructor demonstrations; (3) student-led mini-lectures improve oral communication, deepen conceptual understanding, and strengthen students’ sense of belonging; and (4) frequent formative assessment, such as in-class quizzes, improved mastery of material and, when conducted in groups with open discussion, fostered teamwork, peer learning, and reduced test anxiety. Future work will further examine whether open-discussion in-class quizzes improve student performance even on closed-book, closed-note exams where discussion is not permitted.