Rethinking first year engineering at boise state: Assessment and improvement

Boise State University offers three undergraduate engineering programs, Mechanical, Civil, and Electrical & Computer engineering. The engineering program at Boise State is relatively new with its first BS degrees conferred in 1997. Like most engineering programs, we offer a 3-credit course to first year engineering students. When the programs were first conceived and implemented, there was widespread agreement and consensus on the educational objectives and method of implementation of this course. However, as our faculty and student body grew, and as responsibilities for the course moved from department to department and faculty member to faculty member, it became clear that a more integrated and formal approach was required to both define the goals and content of the course and to document the manner in which it is implemented. At this time, we also considered other issues such as resource utilization and methods for offering this course at a distance. A faculty survey was implemented and analyzed and it was found that a strong consensus existed regarding both the over-all goals and the content of the course. In Fall of 2001, the course was re-structured and three sections were offered. During the course, student assessment was implemented to investigate our success in achieving the course goals. Lessons learned from Fall 2001 were used to modify the approach for the Spring 2002 semester.