Impact of hands-on first year course on student knowledge of and interest in engineering disciplines

Abstract

This paper is the first in a longitudinal study that will correlate student success with the student's initial knowledge and interest in his/her chosen engineering major. Success has two facets. For the students, success can be determined by their satisfaction with their choice of major and timely graduation. For the university, success is determined by retention of the students for the program duration. This particular paper focuses on a hands-on, introductory engineering course mandatory for all incoming engineering students. The course provides career and technical information on the four engineering disciplines offered at Quinnipiac University. The following four questions are investigated: Is there a correlation between a student's initial desire to pursue a specific engineering major and their actual and perceived knowledge of that engineering discipline? For those students who are interested in and knowledgeable about a specific engineering discipline, does the introductory course strengthen that interest? For those students who are unsure about what specific engineering discipline to choose, are the students more likely to be interested in a specific engineering discipline at the end of the course? Does the introductory course increase students' knowledge, actual and perceived, about the specific engineering disciplines? A pre- And post-course survey evaluates student interests and knowledge in each of the four disciplines. The analysis of survey results is the first step of the longitudinal study. Few statistically significant conclusions can be drawn at this point due to the relatively small sample size in each of the four disciplines. However, the work presented in this paper is valuable as a result of the framework presented and the preliminary analysis. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2014.