Siller, T. J., & Cook, A., & Johnson, G. R. (2016, June), Creating International Experiences for First-Year Engineers Through the EWB Australia Challenge Project  Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.26603

\bibitem{asee_peer_26603}
  Siller, T. J., \& Cook, A., \& Johnson, G. R. (2016, June), \emph{Creating International Experiences for First-Year Engineers Through the EWB Australia Challenge Project}
  Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana.
  10.18260/p.26603

Thomas J. Siller, Alistair Cook, and Gearold R. Johnson.  "Creating International Experiences for First-Year Engineers Through the EWB Australia Challenge Project".  2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2016, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2016.  https://peer.asee.org/26603 Internet.  19 Apr, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_26603}
  Thomas J. Siller, Alistair Cook, and Gearold R. Johnson.
  "Creating International Experiences for First-Year Engineers Through the EWB Australia Challenge Project".
  \emph{2016 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2016, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2016.
  https://peer.asee.org/26603 Internet.  19 Apr, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_26603
author = "Thomas J. Siller, Alistair Cook, and Gearold R. Johnson"
title = "Creating International Experiences for First-Year Engineers Through the EWB Australia Challenge Project"
booktitle = "2016 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2016"
month = "June"
address = "New Orleans, Louisiana"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/26603}
number = {10.18260/p.26603}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - During the fall semester of 2014 and 2015, the College of Engineering at Colorado State University (CSU) partnered with non-government organization Engineers Without Borders USA and their sister organization, Engineers Without Borders Australia to pilot the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Challenge program in the United States and to demonstrate the programs academic validity and appropriateness for US curriculum.  The EWB Challenge program was founded by EWB-Australia in 2007 and today the EWB Challenge is a mature program imbedded into curriculum at 52 universities in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, Malaysia and Dubai, reaching over 10,000 first year engineering students each year. At CSU, the EWB Challenge was utilized as part of a first year course with ninety (2014) and one hundred and forty (2015) engineering students who had yet to declare an engineering discipline major.  The program was seen as appropriate for CSU as it would provide an opportunity to look at the philosophy of problem definition, the impacts of culture and context and cross-disciplinary collaboration including working with all project stakeholders with the student participants.  Feedback and reflection on the program was gained through surveys and focus groups with the participating students, both by a team of volunteers from EWB and research staff and students from CSU Colleges of Engineering and Education.

 

The feedback from the students about the EWB program was mainly positive, with over sixty percent of students now interested in pursuing international opportunities in engineering, students also felt overwhelmingly that the EWB Challenge positively affected their understanding of the role of an engineer within society and globally.    Students were also assessed on their own understandings and increase or decrease in understanding of the chosen learning outcomes.  Amongst other important comprehensions students gained a greater understanding around the roles of engineers globally and societally, and the importance of defining the problem and how culture affects decisions.  There was, from qualitative feedback, a lack of understanding of how stakeholders are defined, which was demonstrated in the lower levels of comprehension amongst the students in these areas.   Students were also asked for their feedback on their self-assessed improvement to professional skills, such as understanding the design process and working in teams and had the EWB Challenge program facilitated this improvement.  The students felt, with a few exceptions, that the EWB Challenge had acted as a good introduction to engineering and professional skills and had in general helped them improve their skills in these key areas.  Finally, during the first semester, two thirds of the students taking this course have changed their engineering field preference, with just under sixty percent of the total students stating that the EWB Challenge experience influenced their current preference.
AU  - Thomas J. Siller
AU  - Alistair Cook
AU  - Gearold R. Johnson
CY  - New Orleans, Louisiana
DA  - 2016/06/26
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Creating International Experiences for First-Year Engineers Through the EWB Australia Challenge Project
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/26603
DO  - 10.18260/p.26603
ER  -