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GIFTS: Using Discussion Boards in First-Year Engineering Class and Student Perceptions

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Conference

2018 FYEE Conference

Location

Glassboro, New Jersey

Publication Date

July 24, 2018

Start Date

July 24, 2018

End Date

July 26, 2018

Conference Session

Technical Session IX

Tagged Topic

FYEE Conference Sessions

Page Count

3

DOI

10.18260/1-2--31417

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/31417

Download Count

324

Paper Authors

biography

Krista M Kecskemety Ohio State University

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Krista Kecskemety is an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Engineering Education at The Ohio State University. Krista received her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering at The Ohio State University in 2006 and received her M.S. from Ohio State in 2007. In 2012, Krista completed her Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering at Ohio State. Her engineering education research interests include investigating first-year engineering student experiences, faculty experiences, and the connection between the two.

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Abstract

While the use of discussion boards is not new in courses, it does allow first-year engineering courses to discuss topics that might not be able to be discussed otherwise. At a large midwestern school, the first-year engineering program consists of a 2 course sequence. Each course has specific content that must be covered. Students also take a first-year seminar course that includes an introduction to the university and helps with course/goal planning and engineering major selection. However, in the 2 semester engineering courses, faculty have little time to talk about how students are adjusting to life in college, what their plans are for engineering, and how the semester is going. The discussion boards allow the faculty to gain insight into these things from the students with a simple reflective post each week. The full GIFTS paper will discuss the topics used along with the student perceptions of which topics were the most helpful and which were not. This could be useful to other first-year engineering courses which may have topics they want to ask their students, but don’t necessarily have the class-time to make it happen.

Kecskemety, K. M. (2018, July), GIFTS: Using Discussion Boards in First-Year Engineering Class and Student Perceptions Paper presented at 2018 FYEE Conference, Glassboro, New Jersey. 10.18260/1-2--31417

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