Conference Session

S6B: Full Papers - One Size Does Not Fit All

Collection

14th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience (FYEE) Conference

Authors

Djedjiga Belfadel, Fairfield University; Isaac Macwan, Fairfield University; John F Drazan, Fairfield University

Tagged Topics

Full Papers

process. Topics include professional skills such astechnical writing and presentation, guidelines for professional engineering practice, and careerpreparation that involve an engineering approach to problem-solving with an emphasis on teamwork, oraland written communication, creativity, coding, and computer-aided design tools.The final term design project is redesigned to provide a service-learning experience to build confidence inthe first-year students allowing them to practice their communication skills in an environment in whichthey can also serve as role models and mentors to visiting local middle school students. Through theformation of teams dedicated to the design process, students learn the systematic approach to problem-solving and gain

Conference Session

Technical Session M5A

Collection

2022 First-Year Engineering Experience

Authors

Sean P Brophy, Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE); John H Cole, Purdue University; Srinivas Mohan Dustker, Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE); William C. Oakes, Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE); Carla B. Zoltowski, Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE)

Tagged Topics

Diversity, Full Papers

, range ofapplication, flexibility, large open source community and it is free [7][8]. This paper describeshow a team of faculty designed and implemented a first-year computing learning experience thatexpose students to multiple languages and tools while teaching the fundamentals of computing.The intent is to provide a learning trajectory for computational thinking [9] that help studentslearn how to adapt to new computer tools that automate the computational tasks. The semesterstarts with a short Excel experience and moves to Python and then to MATLAB. The approachuses a spiraled scaffolding instructional approach through the semester. That is, the sequence oflearning experiences iteratively refines students’ conception of how to design a