Sophomore Engineering Curricula	Introduction	Conservation and Accounting Framework	Curriculum Structure: Texas A&M four-course structure	Curriculum Structure: Texas A&M Five-Course Structure
	Curriculum Structure: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Sophomore Engineering Curriculum	Example Problems	Student Performance/Faculty Reactions	Conclusions

Texas A&M Four Course Structure

One of the goals of the four course engineering science core curriculum was to produce students who were better prepared for more challenging material. One of the measures that was to assess student performance on more challenging material was the student’s grade point average (GPA) in subsequent engineering classes. Table 5 shows the average GPA each semester both for students who participated in the four-course curriculum and student in a comparison group for the years 1989 and 1990. Numbers in bold are the grades in the sophomore year, these grades for the Core group were effectively the only grades determined by the faculty involved in the four-course core curriculum.

TABLE 5: Cumulative GPAs for Core and Comparison Groups

Students in 1989:

                        End of:

Students in 1990:

            End of:

The GPA of the students who participated in the four-course core curriculum dropped somewhat during their core experience but it increased after completion of the core curriculum.  For students in the comparison group, their GPA remained constant during the sophomore year, but dropped after their sophomore year.  The GPA data shows that participation in the core curriculum has a positive impact on GPA performance after the completion of the core curriculum.

As another measure of performance on challenging problems after completion of the core curriculum, faculty gave a portion of the Fundamentals of Engineering examination to students who participated in the core curriculum as another comparison group with similar population statistics of GPA and SAT scores. The mean score and standard deviations for the two populations were (Core =0.561, 0.163) and (Control = 0.495, 0.125). The data showed that the core group performed better on the portion of the FOE examination. A comparable gain on the actual FOE would raise a student from the 50th percentile to about the 60th percentile.

As a third measure of performance on challenging problems, faculty prepared three achievement tests: Statics, Dynamics, and Thermodynamics, and offered them to students who participated in the core curriculum in 1991-92. Faculty offered one test at the end of their first sophomore semester, and offered the other two at the end of their second sophomore semester. They were compared against comparison groups who had completed similar course material from the traditional curriculum. The exam coverage, mean, standard deviations and population sizes for these exams were:

Average performance of the core group was superior to the comparison group on the dynamics and thermodynamics examinations, but was inferior on the statics examinations.  The thermodynamics comparisons are significant because the control students were well into their junior years and have had more engineering courses than the core students, yet the core students greatly outperformed the control.  However, it appears that the additional practice on statics problems by students comparison group resulted in superior performance in this engineering science.

In the spring, another four tests were constructed and given to the core and new control groups. The spring exams covered Strength of Materials, Dynamics, Thermodynamics and Fluid Mechanics. The results were: Strength (Core 0.33, 0.20 n=62), (Control Alpha 0.30, 0.17 n=43) (Control Beta 0.57, 0.20 n=34); Dynamics (Core 0.65, 0.31 n=62), (Control Alpha 0.46, 0.26 n=43), (Control Beta 0.60, 0.24 n=34); Thermo (Core 0.60, 0.20 n=62), (Control Gamma 0.53, 0.14 n=98); Fluids (Core 0.33, 0.18 n=62), (Control Delta 0.35, 0.22 n=107).

Core faculty did increase statics and strength of materials content following this analysis, and new testing in Spring of 1994 provided data to determine that the curriculum change was successful with respect to that content.

       Since materials science had not yet been compared, the 1992 cohort compared this performance. As usual the control group was taken from students studying a similar topic in the traditional curriculum. This time the instructor of the control student’s traditional class made up the exam. Results were: (Core 0.52, 0.18), (Control 0.27, 0.20).

References

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