Yuan, D., & DePalma, J. L., & Jaksic, N. I., & Fraser, J. M. (2011, June), A Learning Community for First-Year Engineering Courses  Paper presented at 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC. 10.18260/1-2--17335

\bibitem{asee_peer_17335}
  Yuan, D., \& DePalma, J. L., \& Jaksic, N. I., \& Fraser, J. M. (2011, June), \emph{A Learning Community for First-Year Engineering Courses}
  Paper presented at 2011 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Vancouver, BC.
  10.18260/1-2--17335

Ding Yuan, Jude L. DePalma, Nebojsa I. Jaksic, and Jane M. Fraser.  "A Learning Community for First-Year Engineering Courses".  2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC, 2011, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2011.  https://peer.asee.org/17335 Internet.  04 Dec, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_17335}
  Ding Yuan, Jude L. DePalma, Nebojsa I. Jaksic, and Jane M. Fraser.
  "A Learning Community for First-Year Engineering Courses".
  \emph{2011 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Vancouver, BC, 2011, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2011.
  https://peer.asee.org/17335 Internet.  04 Dec, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_17335
author = "Ding Yuan, Jude L. DePalma, Nebojsa I. Jaksic, and Jane M. Fraser"
title = "A Learning Community for First-Year Engineering Courses"
booktitle = "2011 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2011"
month = "June"
address = "Vancouver, BC"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/17335}
number = {10.18260/1-2--17335}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -            A Learning Community for First-Year Engineering CoursesAbstractA learning community has been established for first-year students in the Department ofEngineering at our institution. Two first-year courses were linked with shared homeworkassignments. In addition, a three-hour robotics lab was added to stimulate students’ interest inengineering, to introduce students to team work, and to allow students to meet other facultymembers in the program. The above items are known strategies for increasing retention.The primary objective of this learning community is to improve the retention of the first-yearengineering students. The learning community has been established for two first-yearengineering courses Introduction to Engineering and Problem Solving for Engineers. Both ofthem introduce programming concepts and two programming languages to the learningcommunity of the first-year engineering students. While Introduction to Engineering is a broad-based preliminary course for all freshman students who are interested in engineering, ProblemSolving for Engineers is a more specific MATLAB-based programming course. The learningcommunity is established first by having joint homework/lab assignments in both MATLAB andExcel. These assignments consist of reading and manipulating data, applying formulas and thenplotting the results.Second, the Introduction to Engineering course has a lab in which each group of students buildsand programs a LEGO Mindstorms NXT Robot to accomplish certain tasks by using theMindstorms NXT graphical programming language. In the near future, in the Problem Solvingfor Engineers course, a joint assignment will be given to finish the same tasks by usingMATLAB to help the students learn the differences between a text-based programming languagelike MATLAB and a graphical programming language like Mindstorms NXT. Furthermore, thebest robots will be displayed in cabinets near the classroom along with the team pictures.Third, there were monthly meetings of the faculty teaching the first year courses. The discussionsincluded the students’ performance, class schedules and other related issues dealing with thelearning community of first-year students.A survey was developed and administered before and after the robotics lab to evaluate students’satisfaction and the knowledge gained. The results show an improvement in students’satisfaction of the overall experience. The effect of the learning community on students’ learningand retention was assessed. The students that are enrolled in only one of the classes served as acontrol group.
AU  - Ding Yuan
AU  - Jude L. DePalma
AU  - Nebojsa I. Jaksic
AU  - Jane M. Fraser
CY  - Vancouver, BC
DA  - 2011/06/26
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - A Learning Community for First-Year Engineering Courses
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/17335
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--17335
ER  -