Session F1E

Does Engineering Major Affect Student Perception of Engineering Courses in a Common First-year
Gretchen Hein, Brett Hamlin
Department of Engineering Fundamentals, Michigan Technological University Houghton, MI 49931-1295 USA glhein@mtu.edu, bhhamlin@mtu.edu Abstract - In the fall of 2000, Michigan Technological University started a common first-year program for all engineering students. In conjunction with the student course evaluations, the students answered ten additional questions and reported their engineering major. These questions were used to evaluate their perception of the first-year engineering courses. The responses were used to assess the students: comfort in using the material and software taught in the courses, experiences in working on a multi-disciplinary team, perceptions of the semester design project, technical communication skills, and perception of time and effort spent on the course. This paper discusses the survey results and investigates how the data changed over time in regard to the relationship between engineering major and student perception of the first-year engineering program. Index Terms Engineering major, Freshman engineering, Student evaluations, Teaming. INTRODUCTION Within a common first-year engineering program challenges occur in regard to meeting the needs of the various engineering students regardless of major. The perception of whether or not the first-year engineering courses are meeting the students needs is of primary concern. Typically, students learn more and do better in courses where they perceive the knowledge gained will benefit them. Many studies have looked at the impact of different underrepresented groups in engineering and their perception of engineering. In a previous paper, the authors investigated the effects of gender and the perception of the first-year engineering courses at Michigan Tech.1 Most of the data collected for this paper indicated that the women at Michigan Tech were very similar to the women studying engineering at other universities. Very few studies have been completed where the focus of the study was on engineering major and the perception of engineering. To determine if first-year engineering courses are meeting the needs of the students and to see if gender affected the perception of the courses, a student survey was developed. The first-year engineering program wanted to determine if students interested in different fields of engineering differed in their opinions of the program. The faculty wanted to see if the first-year engineering classes were meeting the needs of all students regardless of major. BACKGROUND Michigan Technological University has had a common firstyear engineering program since the fall of 2000. Within this program, the students who are Calculus ready take two engineering courses: Engineering Analysis and Problem Solving (ENG1101) and Engineering Modeling and Design (ENG1102). Both courses involve students working on teams in an active learning environment. ENG1101 focuses on students learning basic engineering tools and applying them to engineering problems. In ENG1102, the focus centers around 3-D modeling and modeling a system using MATLAB. During an academic year, approximately 900 first-year engineering students take ENG1101 and ENG1102. Each semester, students review the overall course by completing a university student evaluation. Instructors are only required to have student evaluations completed in one section of each course they teach. For example, in the Fall Semester, most instructors teach between two and four sections of ENG1101, but they are only required to have students evaluate the course in one section. During the analysis period, the first-year engineering program was structured such that during the Fall Semester there are approximately twelve sections of ENG1101 and four (trailing) sections of ENG1102. This structure was reversed in the Spring Semester where there were approximately three times as many sections of ENG1102 than ENG1101. Typically, for this period, most first-year engineering students took ENG1101 in the fall and ENG1102 in the spring. In addition to completing the university evaluation, students answered ten additional questions. This survey information was analyzed for three semesters: Spring 2001, Fall 2002 and Spring 2004. The breakdown of the sections of ENG1101 and ENG1102 are listed in Table I. It shows the number of sections where surveys were completed each. Because evaluations were not completed in all sections of the courses and some students elected not to participate, the number of surveys completed was significantly less than 900. To protect instructor confidentiality, the overall survey results are scanned for analysis. The students section criteria are removed from the analysis. The average section size for ENG1101 and ENG1102 was 55 students.

0-7803-9077-6/05/$20.00 2005 IEEE October 19 22, 2005, Indianapolis, IN 35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference F1E-14

Session F1E
Sem TABLE I FIRST-YEAR ENGINEERING COURSE DISTRIBUTION ENG1101 ENG1102 Sec Surveys* Surveys* Sec M W Tot M W (# ) 3 115 41 159 9 444 110 (72%) (26%) (79%) (20%) 6 264 (79%) 140 (75%) 61 (18%) 31 (17%) 333 2 90 (77%) 239 (70%) 26 (22%) 59 (17%) TABLE II STUDENT EVALUATION QUESTIONS AND RANKING University Question Ranking Tot (# ) 562 I wanted to take this course 1st Year Engineering Program Question Taking Everything into Account, I Consider this Instructor to be an Excellent Teacher Engineering Major Taking Everything into Account, I Consider this Course to be an Excellent Course 341 Overall, I thought the team design project was a meaningful learning experience The Average Number of Hours per Week I Spent on Homework in this Course Was The Total Amount of Time I Spent on this Course Was This Course Helped Me to Confirm/Select a Major (Fall 2002 and Spring 2004) This Course Enhanced my Ability to Function Effectively on a Task-Oriented Team (Fall 2002 and Spring 2004) My Communication Skills (Written and Oral) were Improved Through Completion of the Assignments in this Course (Fall 2002 and Spring 2004) I am Confident in my Ability to Effectively Utilize the Software Tools Incorporated in this Course (Fall 2002 and Spring 2004) Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree (5 pt scale) Ranking Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree (5 pt scale) ME, Chem, Civ/Env, EE/CPE, Other Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree (5 pt scale) Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree (5 pt scale) <3 hours, 3-5 hours, 5-7 hours, 7-9 hours, >9 hours Excessive, Too Much, About Right, Too Little, Minimal Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree (5 pt scale) Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree (5 pt scale) Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree (5 pt scale) Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree (5 pt scale)

Sp 2001 Fall 2002 Sp 2004

117

186

Note: Some students did not complete the survey. One of the questions from the university evaluation form was used in this analysis and is noted in Table II. In addition to the university required questions, the first-year engineering program added ten additional questions. The questions and ranking are shown in Table II. Initial findings of student perception were published in 2002 for data collected in the spring 2001 semester.2 The survey questions addressed issues regarding the overall perception of the course, teaming, communication skills and the design project. In the fall 2002 semester, the survey was updated to include more teaming and communication skills questions. These new questions are noted in Table 2. The data analyzed are based on student responses. No data have been collected regarding GPA or other quantitative data regarding actual student performance. The comparison of numerical data to student perceptions will be completed later. ENGINEERING MAJOR The first item analyzed was the choice of engineering major. This is shown in Table III for ENG1101 and ENG1102. The Other category contains the Geological, Biomedical, Materials and Undecided Engineering students, along with those students enrolled in the School of Technology. The distribution for each course was different because many students change majors and/or select majors during their firstyear. Theoretically, the distribution of major for the Spring Semester of 2001 should be the same as the data collected for the fall 2002 semester of ENG1102. In actuality, the data trends are the same, but the values differ slightly. This could be due to some students not reporting their major on the survey, some students changed majors between the fall and Spring Semesters, or the population changed slightly because students transferred into or out of engineering.

Men and women select engineering majors at different rates. The men tend to select mechanical and electrical/computer engineering. The women tend to be distributed across the majors. This distribution could be skewed due to the low percentages of women enrolled in engineering, not all of the students reported their major and not all sections were surveyed. It is significant that for each semester of data, there were higher percentages of women than men enrolled in Chemical and Civil/Environmental Engineering. Although, the data are not reported in this report, approximately 60% of the students enrolled in Biomedical Engineering are women. These trends are typical of national data. In general, women select engineering majors where they perceive they can provide a benefit to people and/or society. Men select more physical majors where they can use their analytical and spatial skills.3
TABLE III ENGINEERING MAJOR DISTRIBUTION ENG1101 Sem Sp 2001 Fall 2002 Sp 2004 W ENG1102

ME Chem CEE ECE Other ME Chem CEE ECE Other 54 114 66 9 30 16 33 55% 49 37 16% 25 8% 75 34 9% 34 63 32 202 49 138 56 6 36 87 26% 31 70 121 7% 15 52 91 43% 16 25% 44 20%

9% 33%

38% 10% 32%

W 13% 17% W 12% 50%

24% 15% 29% 15% 50% 19% 11% 22%

26% 27% 30% 12%

W = % Women 0-7803-9077-6/05/$20.00 2005 IEEE October 19 22, 2005, Indianapolis, IN 35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference F1E-15

Session F1E
WORKLOAD ANALYSIS Students frequently comment on the work required in ENG1101 and ENG1102. To determine whether or not the students were being overworked, they were asked to report the amount of time they spent each week on the course. Both ENG1101 and ENG1102 are three credit classes. Students are expected to spend 2-3 hours completing homework and studying outside of class per credit hour.2 Therefore, the students should expect to spend 6-9 hours preparing for class and completing homework. Table IV shows the student data from the questions listed in Table 1. Most students reported that they spent approximately 3-5 hours per week on homework and studying in ENG1101. For the most part, the students reported that the amount of homework was about right. The initial analysis of the data shows that the amount of time spent outside of class is less than what the guidelines are. The same trends were found for the ENG1102 data. When the data were analyzed, the students, regardless of major, tended to have similar responses. The overall student perception of the first-year engineering program has improved over the three year period. For example, 6% of the Civil and Environmental students in 2001 reported that ENG1101 team design project was a poor experience; this percentage dropped to 2% and 0% in 2002 and 2004, respectively. All majors except Electrical and Computer Engineering students reported that they spent too much time on homework for this course. Electrical and Computer Engineering students reported that the amount of work outside of class was about right. This contrasts with the amount of time spent on homework, which was 2-5 hours per week (the course is a 3 credit course). The amount of work students completed outside of class decreased over the three semesters that data were collected. This changed the students perception of the workload. The decrease is mainly attributed to fine tuning a new program and increasing the work time during class. The in-class work time affected more than just the amount of time students spent on the course. It also affected the students perception of the courses which is discussed later in this paper. TEAMING A major component of ENG1101 and ENG1102 is teaming. At the beginning of the semester, students are assigned to teams. They learn about teams, team interactions and team roles and team challenges. In the second course, the students review teaming and discuss how their team worked or did not work. In both courses, the students work in teams in class, on team assignments and on a semester long design projects. The team approach to learning provides an active environment in the classroom. Students not only talk within their team but they have discussions across team boundaries. These discussions center on the class activity and provide the instructor with the opportunity to work with teams that are having difficulties with the activity.
TABLE IV STUDENT REPORTED WORKLOAD FOR ENG1101 Spring 2001 Spring 2004 ME ChemCEEECE Other ME ChemCEEECEOther The Average Amount of Time I spent on homework was: <3 hrs 3-5 hrs 5-7 hrs 7-9 hrs >9 hrs Excessive Too Much About Right Too Little Minimal n 19% 22% 0% 12% 21% 29% 25% 11% 26% 13% 30% 33% 39% 40% 26% 42% 63% 43% 29% 47% 33% 44% 30% 36% 26% 20% 0% 41% 29% 22% 4% 15% 17% 0% 18% 8% 18% 20% 13% 0% 9% 0% 12% 4% 0% 9% 2% 0% 5% 6% 9% 6%

The total amount of time I Spent on this Course was: 9% 20% 18% 21% 19% 19% 12% 9%

26% 33% 42% 44% 38% 24% 50% 22% 32% 25% 52% 56% 33% 28% 32% 44% 25% 51% 50% 50% 4% 0% 54 11% 12% 4% 0% 9 0% 0% 33 25 6% 44% 0% 6% 2% 0% 34 66 16 3% 0% 0% 0% 37 34 3% 3% 32

Every year, ENG1101 and 1102 are modified and improved based on assessment information. One of the most significant improvements is the inclusion of additional in-class work time. For each course, there are approximately three to five days of in-class work days throughout the semester. On these days, the instructor and teaching assistant work with individual teams on portions of their design project, homework and analyses. These class sessions are dynamic and active. Teams ask other teams questions, along with the instructor and teaching assistant. Figure 1 illustrates how the attitude towards teaming changed over the monitoring period. All majors perceived the teaming experience to improve over time (neutral, agree and strongly agree categories). For Chemical, Civil and Environmental and Electrical and Computer Engineering students, there were no students who reported their teaming experience was sub-standard in 2004. This finding was surprising because the faculty in Chemical and Electrical and Computer engineering have expressed concerns regarding the topics their students are learning. This concern has been and is being addressed in several ways. First, the first-year engineering and the departmental faculty are working together to ensure all engineering disciplines are represented in the first-year engineering courses.

0-7803-9077-6/05/$20.00 2005 IEEE October 19 22, 2005, Indianapolis, IN 35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference F1E-16

Session F1E
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Elect/Comp Elect/Comp Civ/Env Civ/Env Other Chem Chem Other ME ME
100%

Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Civ/Env Elect/Comp Civ/Env Elect/Comp Chem Chem Other Other ME ME

Strongly Disagree Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly Agree

Fall 2002

Spring 2004

Fall 2002

Spring 2004

FIGURE 1 STUDENT RESPONSES TO: ENG1101 ENHANCED MY ABILITY TO FUNCTION ON A TASK-ORIENTED TEAM

FIGURE 2 STUDENT RESPONSES TO: MY COMMUNICATION SKILLS (WRITTEN AND ORAL) WERE IMPROVED THROUGH COMPLETION OF THE ASSIGNMENTS IN ENG1101

The students perception of the design project in ENG1101 and ENG1102 has improved over the three year monitoring period (neutral, agree and strongly agree categories). The trends mimic the data in Figure 1. This improvement is attributed to changes in the courses. In ENG1101 and ENG1102, in-class work time is allotted for completing design project calculations, program debugging and 3-D modeling. This in-class work provides students with time to work as a team and ask the instructor questions regarding their assignment. TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS AND COMPUTER TOOLS A primary goal of the first-year engineering program at Michigan Tech is to improve the technical communication skills of the students. Students learn how to communicate as an engineer through writing reports and memos. They give technical presentations both semesters. Survey questions were used to determine the students perception of their communication skills. Figure 2 shows the students evaluation of these skills. There are only two semesters of data because these questions were added in fall 2002. In ENG1101, all majors showed an increase in the evaluation of their technical communication skills except the Mechanical Engineering students. The most significant improvement was for the Chemical Engineering students. Between the Fall 2002 and Spring 2004, the department added a mass balance analysis to ENG1101. It was used to show students how to document a problem and analyze the process at different scales (pilot, lab and full scales). Additional assignments involved analyzing the system using spreadsheets and Mathcad.

The students are not reporting improvements in their communication skills due to ENG1102 (Figure 3). ENG1102 focuses on the application of I-DEAS to model 3-D systems, and Matlab to simulate a process. These tools are not as intuitive for the students to learn and use. Therefore, the confidence of the students to use these tools decreased between ENG1101 and ENG1102. Because the focus of ENG1102 is on programming and 3-D modeling, the first-year students may not recognize that they are learning and applying communication skills. They do communicate their results in reports, memos and technical presentations within ENG1102, but the time spent on these tasks is much less than in ENG1101. This may cause the students not to realize that they are developing communication skills.
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Civ/Env Elect/Comp Civ/Env Elect/Comp Chem Chem Other Other ME ME
Agree Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral

Fall 2002

Spring 2004

FIGURE 3 STUDENT RESPONSES TO: MY COMMUNICATION SKILLS (WRITTEN AND ORAL) WERE IMPROVED THROUGH COMPLETION OF THE ASSIGNMENTS IN ENG1102

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Session F1E
REMAINING SURVEY ANALYSES The survey assessed the students overall perception of the course and instructor, whether or not they wanted to take the courses and if the courses helped them select/confirm their engineering major. In general, most of the entering freshmen want to take ENG1101, regardless of gender. Unfortunately, less students want to take ENG1102. This may be an artifact of ENG1101. In ENG1101, many topics are covered at a rapid rate. While solving engineering problems, students learn how to use: College of Engineering computing system Spreadsheets Mathcad Oral and written technical communication. With all these topics, ENG1101 becomes a class filled with important information but it is very difficult to tie into one integrated course. ENG1102 is not disjointed, but students enter the course with that perception due to their experience in ENG1101. Most students wanted to take the first-year engineering courses (Figure 4). The data for ENG1102 is not shown because it closely follows the trends found in ENG1101. For Spring 2001, a significant fraction of all students, regardless of major, did not want to take the first-year engineering courses. Much of that could be due to the program being new. As the courses were improved, the more students wanted to take ENG1101. For all majors, except the Other category, the percentage of students Strongly disagreeing had dropped to almost zero. engineering faculty are continually updating the courses. The changes are made due to many factors: Faculty want to try something new Student feedback on course material College of Engineering input regarding design projects, class assignments and course material

100%

80% Strongly Disagree 60% Disagree Neutral 40% Agree Strongly Agree 20%

0% Elect/Comp Elect/Comp Elect/Comp Chem Chem Civ/Env Civ/Env Chem Civ/Env Other Other Other ME ME ME

Spring 2001

Fall 2002 Semester

Spring 2004

FIGURE 4 I WANTED TO TAKE ENG1101

The most significant change was for the Electrical and Computer Engineering students. In the spring of 2001, 16% of these students did not want to take this course. This percentage dropped to 3% in the spring of 2004. Chemical Engineering students reported similarly. The change in attitude regarding the courses could be due to many factors. First, the first-year

Within the survey, students were asked if the instructor and the course were excellent. In a recent paper, the accessibility of the instructor and student perception of the course were shown to be related.4 The same was true for ENG1101 and ENG1102. In ENG1101, the percentage of students ranking the course and the instructor as poor was lower than the percentage in ENG1102. This is due to the course content. The software packages in ENG1102 include and I-. Because these software applications are more difficult to learn and use, the students found these skills harder to master and do well. ENG1101, because it focuses on technical communication skills and developing teaming skills, fewer students ranked the course poorly. Most students find communication skills less difficult than the material covered in ENG1102. In ENG1101, students complete two technical presentations, an historical engineering event/invention and an Engineering Ethics Case Study. Student teams self-select the topic for their engineering history presentation from a list of several hundred topics. The topics range from mathematical, science and engineering equations to engineering inventions that have altered society (assembly line, solar energy, computers, etc.) (See the link to the pdf file on: www.geneng.mtu.edu/eng1101.html for the complete listing of historical topics). The breadth of these topics allows teams to select something that really interests them. Therefore, the presentations are good. During the time period of the survey, the Engineering Ethics Case Studies were all based on the standard case studies (ie: On-Line Ethics, NSPE Ethics Case Studies). The ethical issues in these studies are easy to delineate and analyze. Students commented that they would like more case studies that looked at open-ended issues and current topics. In the spring, 2005 semester, over twenty additional case studies were added to the choices for students. The complete list can be reviewed on www.geneng.mtu.edu/eng1101/fall04/ethics/ethics.html. These issues include the power outage in 2004, oil drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and Technology in third world nations. The new cases address engineering issues that affect society and people. This is one area of engineering that women find interesting. Many students enter the first-year engineering program as engineering undecided students. Over 60% of entering college students change their major at some point in their college career.5 Therefore, students were asked if ENG1101 and ENG1102 helped them to select their major or confirm that they were in the right major. Across all majors, there was no trend that the first-year engineering program either helped

0-7803-9077-6/05/$20.00 2005 IEEE October 19 22, 2005, Indianapolis, IN 35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference F1E-18

Session F1E
or harmed the selection of major. When the issue of gender was investigated, it was found that women students reported that ENG1101 helped them select a major. The men reported that ENG1102 helped them select a major.1 The distribution of women throughout the various engineering majors and the low number of women could explain why this trend did not show up on the analysis of the engineering major. FUTURE CHANGES REFERENCES Beginning in Fall 2005, substantial changes to the first-year engineering program will be implemented. ENG1101 and ENG1102 will be changed to reflect the needs of the College of Engineering. Within ENG1101, students will no longer learn how to use Mathcad. Instead, the portion of the course that focuses on the application of spreadsheets will include the application and use of spreadsheet macros. All first-year engineering students will learn the basics of 3-D modeling using Solid Edge. These changes closely reflect the changes the departments see in industry and within their courses. In ENG1102, the different sections will reflect the different interests of the students and the needs of their majors. For example, there will be section of ENG1102 that apply Unigraphics and Matlab in course assignments and the design project. Other sections will involve more focus on Matlab or computer programming or the application of Mathcad to solve engineering problems. In both ENG1101 and ENG1102, sustainability will be an underlying focus. The issue of designing products and systems with consideration to the environment and the effect of the design on the public will be incorporated into all aspects of the course. CONCLUSIONS The use of optional questions on the student evaluation forms within the first-year engineering program has been analyzed to find the differences between the perceptions of the different engineering majors over a three year period. Overall, the student perception of the first-year program has improved from 2001 to 2004. The students in Chemical and Electrical and Computer Engineering showed the most positive change in their perception of the first-year engineering program over the three year monitoring period. This is due to the faculty within the first-year engineering department and the other engineering programs working together to incorporate their discipline into the courses. The Department of Engineering Fundamentals plans on continuing this survey to see if the trends change over time. This research will continue to seek out the qualitative and quantitative factors that effect and/or enhance the success of women engineering students. The department will complete a more in-depth statistical analysis of the data to determine how data collected at the college level corresponds to the data selfreported by the students. [1] Hein, G.L., B.H. Hamlin, Does Gender Affect Student Perception of Engineering Courses in a Common First Year Program?, Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Educations Annual Conference & Exposition, June 2005, American Society for Engineering Education, Session 2192. [2] Sorby, S.A., N.L. Boersma, Assessment of Student Perceptions of First-Year Engineering,, International Conference on Engineering Education, August 18-21, 2002, Manchester, U.K. [3] Cambell, K. The Promise of Computer-Based Learning: Designing for Inclusivity, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Winter 1999/2000, pg. 28-34. [4] Gall, K., D.W. Knight, L.E. Carlson, J.F. Sullivan, Making the Grade with Students: The Case for Accessibility, Journal of Engineering Education, October 2003, pg. 337-343. [5] Olds, B.M., R.L. Miller, The Effect of a First-Year Integrated Engineering Curriculum on Graduation Rates and Student Satisfaction: A Longitudinal Study, Journal of Engineering Education, January 2004, pg. 23-35. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors would like to thank the ENG1101 and ENG1102 students who voluntarily complete the optional questions each semester. They thank the Department of Engineering Fundamentals faculty for asking their students to complete the survey. Without the students and the faculty input, this study would not have been possible.

0-7803-9077-6/05/$20.00 2005 IEEE October 19 22, 2005, Indianapolis, IN 35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference F1E-19