A qualitative investigation of students in a first-year engineering learning community

Computer science, engineering and technology (CSET) education faces many challenges to prepare graduates for the changing global workplace and to accurately retain students. Learning communities, where students are grouped in cohorts for classes and residence hall assignments, provide a useful vehicle to achieve these goals. In addition their potential to facilitate service-learning has motivated the Department of Engineering Education at Purdue University to implement learning communities on a large scale for first-year engineering students. The 2003 cohort involved over 140 students. The focus of this paper is to fill a void in the literature by conducting and reporting a qualitative investigation of how students perceive their experiences and their resulting impacts after being involved in the engineering learning communities. Results from 20 interviews are summarized as well as recommendations for programmatic improvements