TY - GEN
T1 - Active and cooperative learning in a freshman digital design course
T2 - 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE
AU - Reisslein, Martin
AU - Tylavsky, Daniel
AU - Matar, Bassam
AU - Seeling, Patrick
AU - Reisslein, Jana
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - In an effort to retain students in the electrical and computer science/engineering programs at Arizona State University, a freshman-level introductory digital logic design course was designed with extensive active learning components in cooperative student teams as well as hardware and software (simulation) labs. This paper reports on an evaluation of the impact of the course on the persistence of the students in the program. The recently proposed persistence in engineering (PIE) survey instrument was adapted for our setting and combined with mastery, performance, and alienation survey items to obtain deeper insights into the motivational orientations of the students. The survey was conducted both at the beginning of the course and at the end of the course to assess the impact of the course on persistence and motivational orientations. Evaluation data for two years worth of offerings of the course to a diverse population of over 450 students revealed a significant positive impact of the course on student perceptions of their skills applying science and math to real-world problems as well as of their performance on teams. On the other hand, the course significantly negatively impacted the students' perceptions of the course workload and intensified their alienation motivation tendencies.
AB - In an effort to retain students in the electrical and computer science/engineering programs at Arizona State University, a freshman-level introductory digital logic design course was designed with extensive active learning components in cooperative student teams as well as hardware and software (simulation) labs. This paper reports on an evaluation of the impact of the course on the persistence of the students in the program. The recently proposed persistence in engineering (PIE) survey instrument was adapted for our setting and combined with mastery, performance, and alienation survey items to obtain deeper insights into the motivational orientations of the students. The survey was conducted both at the beginning of the course and at the end of the course to assess the impact of the course on persistence and motivational orientations. Evaluation data for two years worth of offerings of the course to a diverse population of over 450 students revealed a significant positive impact of the course on student perceptions of their skills applying science and math to real-world problems as well as of their performance on teams. On the other hand, the course significantly negatively impacted the students' perceptions of the course workload and intensified their alienation motivation tendencies.
KW - Digital design course
KW - Motivational orientation
KW - Persistence
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=50049091210&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=50049091210&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/FIE.2007.4417917
DO - 10.1109/FIE.2007.4417917
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:50049091210
SN - 1424410843
SN - 9781424410842
T3 - Proceedings - Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE
SP - S4A1-S4A6
BT - 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE
Y2 - 10 October 2007 through 13 October 2007
ER -