First-year integrated curricula: Design alternatives and examples

Journal of Engineering Education, Oct 1999 by Al-Holou, Nizar, Bilgutay, Nihat M, Corleto, Carlos, Demel, John T, Et al

First-Year Integrated Curricula: Design

Alternatives and Examples*

ABSTRACT

The National Science Foundation has supported creation ofeight engineering education coalitions: ECSEL, Synthesis, Gateway, SUCCEED, Foundation, Greenfield, Academy, and SCCME. One common area ofwork across the coalitions has been restructuring first-year engineering curricula. Within some of the coalitions, schools have designed and implemented integrated firstyear curricula. The purpose of this paper is fourfold: 1) to review the different pilot projects that have been developed; 2) to abstract some design alternatives that can be explored by schools interested in developing an integrated first-year curriculum; 3) to indicate some logistical challenges; and 4) to present brief descriptions of various curricula along with highlights of the assessment results that have been obtained.

I. INTRODUCTION

A long-term key to improving US productivity is engineering education; however, engineering education faces substantial challenges. First, economic factors such as rising costs, reduced operating budgets, aging infrastructure, and increased competition for incoming students from other disciplines are creating pressures for change. Second, the increasing percentage of non-traditional students presents unique challenges for the traditional classroom system, especially for urban universities.1 Such challenges include balancing class and work schedules, balancing workloads, and traveling between work and university. Third, many studies have documented that traditional classroom teaching may not be the best approach to teach college students.2-5 These challenges have led to a growing conclusion that a change in teaching pedagogy is needed.

As a result, government, industry, and educational institutions have started searching for innovative ways to improve learning. For example, the National Science Foundation has funded eight coalitions to focus on change in pedagogy and to develop new, highquality curricula for traditional and non-traditional students in engineering. The eight coalitions are Greenfield, Gateway, ECSEL, Foundation, Academy, SCCEME, SUCCEED, and Synthesis.6

This paper summarizes efforts across the NSF-sponsored engineering education coalitions to design, implement and evaluate integrated, first-year curricula. We have explored integrated curricula across the coalitions and abstracted design elements that may be considered by any institution interested in an integrated first-year curriculum. We have examined a large number of issues which have been raised in connection with integrated curricula, synthesized these issues into non-overlapping design options, and described the state-of-the-art regarding these design options for institutions interested in future integrated curriculum implementations. The paper explores four broad categories of questions about integrated curricula: motivation, different pedagogical models, logistical issues, and assessment and evaluation processes and results.

II. MOTIVATION: WHY INTEGRATION?

The following two subsections summarize advantages and disadvantages for integrated curricula.

A. Advantages

Faculty interested in implementing an integrated curriculum must address the question: Why might an integrated curriculum offer an improved learning experience for at least some, if not all, of the entering engineering students? Ten frequently offered reasons are provided below.

1) Learning theory suggests that student learn by constructing their own ideological scaffolding. Students construct, discover, transform, and extend their own knowledge. Learning is something the learner does, not something that is done to a learner. Students do not passively accept knowledge from a teacher or curriculum. They use new information to activate their existing cognitive structures or build new ones. Instructors create environments within which students can construct meaning from new material, study by processing it through existing cognitive structures, and then retain it in long-term memory where it remains open to further processing and possible reconstruction7 Integrated curricula deliver such stimulating environments.

2) If an interdisciplinary faculty team designs a comprehensive integrated curriculum, then they can avoid haphazard repetition of material and focus on concepts that students have trouble learning. Class time is saved with one-time introductions on common topics such as team skills, computer tools, vectors, and units. These common topics may be introduced once, then applied and reinforced later. Also, careful design will allow instructors to reinforce difficult topics by knowing what their colleagues have presented. Students can then see several instructors presenting similar topics and each presentation could appeal to different learning preferences.

3) Re-arranging topics so students learn related concepts simultaneously promotes a broader-based level of understanding rather than a more narrow discipline-specific understanding of each topic.8