An engineering introductory seminar course for first-year college students

To help first year students adapt to their college lives and to enhance student learning, freshman seminar courses have been popular in many advanced countries. However, seminar courses in China are still in the beginning stage and are mainly for elective courses considering the large number of students in many majors. In this paper, implementation of a new required freshman seminar course, “Introduction to learning in the specialty of electronics and information” in Southeast University, is introduced. The course is composed of three education stages, i.e., lecture, investigation and project, during which the students can have closer and closer views to the applications of electronic science and engineering, and gain in-depth experience of relevant projects step by step. In addition, by making use of flexible class forms, various teaching methods, composite evaluation methods, and collaboration of a teacher team, the seminar course has been successfully run for about 170 students for the first time.