A successful motivational freshman design experience using attached learning

Considerable interest has been shown in improving retention rates and motivation by improving student satisfaction, particularly at the freshman level. In this paper, we describe a new, team-taught, interdisciplinary, design-oriented introduction to engineering course that has proven to be a very successful motivational experience for first-year electrical engineering and mechanical engineering majors. The course is technically based since the primary goal of the course is still to assist students in selecting between electrical engineering and mechanical engineering as a major, but we have completely revised the process of selecting course contents and the instructional methods. To guide us in the selection of course contents, the faculty team developed the concept of "attached learning", wherein all materials selected for the course must be applicable, or attached, to the end-of-semester design project to make learning relevant and to motivate students to learn. Evidence of the success of the new course is presented.