ASEE Magazine Features Best Practices in Engineering Education

When the College was contacted by ASEE's Prism Magazine for an article that was being written on how to better engage engineering freshmen, Dean of the Frank Batten College of Engineering & Technology Oktay Baysal jumped at the chance to share our approach with its readers.

The topic of the article is quite an important one in the world of engineering academia. It seems that students graduate high school with a preordained notion of what engineering as a major entails and who belongs in engineering courses. Dean Baysal sought to redirect those students' thinking in the recent reformatting of engineering freshmen curriculum. The intent of redesigning the first-year experience is not to persuade every incoming student to pursue engineering, says Old Dominion University's engineering dean, Oktay Baysal, who oversaw the development of a common first-year curriculum, but "to inform them about engineering as quickly as possible and break down stereotypes," so when they choose to major in it, it's "not because your uncle said so, but for the right reasons."

Early results suggest that re-engineering the first-year experience has paid off in higher retention rates and greater student engagement. While all the schools involved had experienced student attrition in the past, they all saw the need to retool the experiences of the freshman student. These changes have better prepared and interested the students in the coursework. ODU Engineering, for example, incorporated hands-on, team-based first-year design projects have seen remarkablejumps in retention.

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