This innovative practice WIP paper addresses the significant challenge of engaging first-year engineering students with diverse technical backgrounds in higher education. At Michigan Tech University, we tackle this challenge by implementing a flipped teaching model supplemented with active discovery team projects. In our approach, nearly 1000 first-year engineering students are equipped with their own Arduino kits from day one of class. With “kits in hand”, students can self-select different programming and design challenges. This “choose your own adventure” challenge-set accommodates varying technical experiences, ranging from simple tasks, like creating a single flashing LED using MATLAB and Arduino, to complex projects such as designing multi-axis stoplight systems with left turn lanes and pedestrian crosswalks. By offering students autonomy in selecting their project challenges, we observed heightened self-reported levels of engagement, enjoyment, and a deeper sense of utility attributed to the skills acquired from their learning experiences. Moreover, this approach obviates the need to persuade students about the relevance of programming in engineering practice, as they experience it first-hand. Our assessment, reflected in end-of-semester course evaluations, demonstrates a notable shift in student perceptions. The percentage of students strongly agreeing to feeling engaged increased from 14% to 27%, with corresponding shifts observed across agree and slightly agree categories. Similarly, the percentage of students strongly agreeing to enjoying the class rose from 14% to 24%, with discernible decreases in slightly agree, slightly disagree, and disagree responses. This abstract provides insights into a transformative pedagogical approach that not only enhances student engagement but also fosters a positive learning environment conducive to the development of essential engineering skills. This work is significant because it shares how programs can be scaled to add value and build foundational engineering skills no matter a student's technical background or engineering program enrollment.

This research full paper is a study by the first-year engineering program at Michigan Technological University. Since 1999, the Department of Engineering Fundamentals has prided itself on our active, collaborative, first-year engineering program. While we have undergone many shifts in instructional models (e.g., blended learning, flipped learning), our dedication to this type of classroom environment has held firm. Most recently, our department moved to a flipped model of instruction and the inclusion of a significant peer mentoring presence in the classroom. With these major instructional changes, we evaluated the student perceptions of the classroom climate and identified that a majority of our students are experiencing a positive, active, and collaborative learning environment where they feel supported by their peers, student mentors and instructors and confident in their success as future engineers. This paper details our study approach, methods, and results

This innovative practice full paper describes a student project that occurred during the 2023–24 academic year at Michigan Technological University. Students in the second semester engineering class developed an educational escape box as part of a semester-long design experience. Students began by selecting a target audience for the escape box (middle, high school, or college students), identified the topic or skills they wished to highlight, and researched educational strategies to facilitate effective learning. The escape box projects were used to reinforce the common content of the course (spatial visualization, 3D modeling, programming, and design) and the incorporation of an Arduino Uno to collect data from the environment (e.g., sensors) or students (e.g, buttons) and provide information back to the user (e.g., on/off lighting, visual display, program output) to indicate they have/have not successfully completed the challenge. This paper will focus on the development of this unique design project for first-year engineering students and lessons learned throughout the first two iterations of this in the classroom.

This work-in-progress paper proposes a study that examines the effects of grading on the role of near peer mentors (NPMs). Two well-developed near peer mentoring models, Supplemental Instruction (SI) and the Learning Assistants (LA) Program do not allow their SI Leaders or LAs to grade student work. This separation in roles prevents a power dynamic between the student and the SI Leaders/LAs from forming where the Leader/LAs have perceived control over student success. At Michigan Technological University, teaching assistants were used in our first-year engineering courses; however, in a course redesign in 2017, the teaching assistant role was converted into a near-peer mentoring (NPM) role that retained grading responsibilities. Our NPMs, who we call LEarning with Academic Partners (LEAP) Leaders, have reported that they find value in grading their students' work as it helps them to plan activities to best suit their students’ needs. Additionally, grading allows an opportunity to more closely monitor student submissions and to more quickly identify and intervene when a student is lagging behind.This proposed study will examine the effects of LEAP Leaders grading their students’ work on: 1) the Leader’s ability to help their students and 2) the relationships between the Leaders and their students.

The first-year program at Michigan Technological University emphasizes an active, collaborative learning environment. Students are grouped into teams of 3-5 students to work on class activities and projects. The success of this program relies on the students learning to work together and numerous activities in the class are designed to help build these teamwork skills. For example, teams are expected to build a team contract at the beginning of the semester and provide formative and summative feedback to each team member in the form of peer evaluations.In the Fall of 2021, four faculty members at Michigan Technological University evaluated two different teaming systems designed to help enhance these teamwork skills: CATME and Team+. A total of 402 students, in 19 sections of our first-year engineering course participated in this study. Sections were randomly assigned to using either the CATME or Team+ tool. Eight sections (170 students) used the CATME tool and eleven sections (232 students) used Team+. We have historically used the CATME team tool in our courses for peer evaluation. Comparing peer evaluation results with Team+ is one metric we used to measure how our first-year engineering populations responded to this new teaming software. Additionally, we evaluated the impact both of these tools had on team connectedness and satisfaction as well as participation levels in team development activities throughout the semester. This paper will summarize these overall quantitative metrics as well as the reflections from students and faculty on both teaming systems.

This innovative practice full paper reviews the formation and effects of the LEarning with Academic Partners (LEAP) program at Michigan Technological University in the first two years of operation. The LEAP Program combines the job requirements of a traditional Teaching Assistant (TA) with those of a Supplemental Instruction (SI) Leader. While each program has their benefits, to date, no one has evaluated the effects of a combined program such as the one established at Michigan Tech. To determine these effects, we focused our analysis on measuring course performance and student attitudes of student groups in a second semester first-year engineering course, ENG1102 - Engineering Modeling and Design: Spring 2017 (no LEAP), Spring 2017 (no LEAP/pilot LEAP with optional attendance), and 2018 (LEAP with mandatory attendance).

This Work in Progress, Research-to-Practice report focuses on an overview of an extensive project to update the First-Year Engineering Program, Michigan Technological University. After three planning years, and multiple pilot course offerings, we rolled out at scale in Fall, 2017. Our core student outcome goals in the revamped first-year program include strengthening the ability for open-ended problem solving, enhanced facility with computational problem solving applied to engineering problems, and increased student growth in traits of self-starting learning and positive attitudes for life-long learning. In this report, we describe both the core components of our revised program and the process we have followed to gain support for our revised first-year program, thus promoting program sustainability. We conclude with a core list of research questions we will pursue beginning in AY 2018-2019.

Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a program that has been shown to be successful in supporting students in historically challenging courses and improving grades, retention, and understanding of course material. SI was started at the University of Missouri — Kansas City (UMKC) in 1973, but has since branched out to approximately 1500 institutions in 30 countries. In the spring of 2016, two faculty members from Michigan Technological University attended SI training at the International Center for SI at UMKC with the intention of developing a similar program to support the first-year engineering courses at Michigan Tech. The LEarning with Academic Partners (LEAP) program is the program that has developed as a result of that effort. While based on SI, the LEAP program has several distinct differences, which will be outlined in this paper. In Fall 2016, LEAP was implemented in three of fifteen sections (180 students, 9 Leaders) of ENG1101 — Engineering Analysis and Problem Solving, the first engineering course taken by calculus-ready students in all engineering majors. In Spring 2017, LEAP has been incorporated into three of fourteen sections (172 students, 9 Leaders) of ENG1102 — Engineering Modeling and Design and one section (61 students, 3 Leaders) of ENG1101. In this paper we will discuss the successes and failures of our first year with LEAP as we look to assess and expand the LEAP program to all sections of ENG1101 and ENG1102 (approximately 1100 students, 50 Leaders) beginning next academic year. We will share perspectives from students, LEAP Leaders, supervisors, and faculty.

Many schools are incorporating project-based interdisciplinary exercises into their engineering curriculum in order to develop the qualitative and quantitative skills simultaneously. It has been shown that introducing design in a freshman engineering course has a positive impact on retention, stimulates interest in engineering and enhances communication, teaming and time management skills. But can design also improve creativity? Or, to be more specific, would an open-ended design project improve creativity in engineering students? In the fall of 2015, an innovative design project was used in a first-year engineering course at Michigan Technological University. Students were given the task to develop a prototype of a new product or an improvement on an existing product. While some of the tasks were defined throughout the semester, the product they created was completely up to the team. It was thought that the open-ended nature of the project and the product itself being new or innovative would help improve their creativity. Students completing this project were given a 55 question pre- and post-assessment. This assessment included several measures of general creativity and entrepreneurial intentions: Oreg's Resistance to Change Scale (RTC), the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory (CEI), and the Zampetakis & Moustakis Scale (Z & M Scale). This paper focuses on the development and evaluation of this open-ended design project for first-year engineering students and the results of the various measures of creativity.

First-year engineering students enter our university with differing experiences using computers and technology. This affects the classroom dynamic especially with large differences between students. With this in mind, faculty must address the following questions when planning their course: Where should the faculty focus their time? Do they focus on bringing everyone to a specific level? Do they teach to the average student and hope the less experienced keep up and the more experienced are not bored? The first step to answering these questions is to determine the distribution of experience. To assess this, first-year engineering students at Michigan Technological University were given the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) Computer Access and Familiarity Survey (Grade 12) during their first week of classes. The NAEP survey measures access to and familiarity with technology. The survey was modified to measure the familiarity with computing tasks students use in their first engineering courses. This paper will focus on determining: how much exposure to computers and technology have our students had, what exactly is the depth and breadth of the skills they enter the university with, and are there any factors within access or familiarity that impact success in the first-year engineering courses?

In this report we will describe our first steps in understanding the characteristics of individuals enrolling and completing MOOCs. The learner characteristic we focus on is the deep versus shallow learning dimension. We will use the revised two-factor study process questionnaire of Biggs in our study [1]. To our knowledge, there is no comparable research either reported in the literature or currently under way. Our focus is on Learning How to Learn (LHTL), currently the most heavily subscribed course on the Coursera platform. The last offering of LHTL, completed in January, 2015, attracted just under a quarter million learners. In the fourth and final week of the course, the R-SPQ-2F survey instrument was made available to all students on the LHTL site. Approximately 1,600 students completed the survey. We believe our research to be of interest widely because of the confluence in our research of (a) MOOCs, (b) the deep versus surface learning dimension, and (c) a methodology that can lead to better understanding of MOOCs.

Creativity has been studied extensively since 1956 when the NSF sponsored the first national research conference on creativity (Taylor, 1962). Within engineering education, one often hears the call for the development of creativity in engineering students. As part of the IDEAS grant (DUE-0836861), we examined the relationship between domain specific hypothetical challenges and opportunities, and engineering students' self-reported attitudes and behavioral intentions designed to measure creative self-efficacy in engineering. Our concept of creative self-efficacy in engineering was designed to assess one's confidence in their ability to be creative within the engineering domain. Using factors analysis procedures, we have identified four factors that appear to be novel indicators of creative self-efficacy in engineering: Cognitive Approaches, Cognitive Challenges, Cognitive Preparedness, and Impulsivity in problem solving.

It has been shown that spatial visualization skills are a critical part of engineering education. Methods to improve these skills are varied, but in general contain activities that have students attempt to visualize objects when translated or rotated from their original orientation. At Michigan Technological University, students take a two-semester engineering course sequence (ENG1101 and ENG1102) during their first year. Both courses have activities that help develop spatial visualization skills through hand sketching and 3D modeling. This paper describes two culminating spatial visualization activities that combine all the skills learned by the students in their engineering coursework. In one case, students are provided with an object that has four or more distinct parts. Students measure, sketch, dimension, and model a single component and then combine their object with their team member's objects into a completed assembly in NX. A more advanced boot dryer project allows students flexibility in their final design. Students are provided with several components to the dryer, but not all. Based on their measurements and models of the given parts, they can design and model unique boot dryer systems.

Design projects give instructors a chance to integrate lecture material into an engaging engineering experience. Students working on “real-world” design projects can see how their projects apply to life outside the classroom. There has been much talk about implementing a “cornerstone” design experience into first-year classes, but how “real-world” can a design project be for first-year engineering students without the technical background of their upper-division counterparts? Can students see the applications of their designs when their models and simulations are limited due to their skill set? At Michigan Technological University, we are investigating what happens when first-year students learn about future research opportunities and coursework from upper-division students, and how this material is related to their design project. It is hoped that students will have a greater enthusiasm for their project when they know that their knowledge will be useful in the future or when they see where their design project work could lead. In addition, it is hoped that students will have a greater understanding of the application of their own work.