DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN INTEGRATED
ENGINEERING CURRICULUM FOR THE SOPHOMORE YEAR

ABSTRACT

In 1995-96 the Foundation Coalition at Texas A&M University - Kingsville (TAMUK) formed a second year team to develop and implement an integrated engineering curriculum for the sophomore year. The team has consisted of eleven faculty members from all the engineering disciplines (CE, CHE, EE, IE, ME, and NGE) plus physics and mathematics. Seven of the faculty are senior faculty. The team has operated on weekly (1-2 hour) workshop style sessions for both the planning and the implementation phases of this work. The team has followed a code of cooperation and continues to practice the principles of teaming.

Using the Affinity Process to group sophomore topics and the Modified Nominal Group Technique to prioritize the topics, the team evolved a curriculum in 1995-96. The sophomore curriculum consisted of four courses (13 semester hrs) in the first semester and three courses (9 semester hrs) in the second semester. It directly builds upon the integrated engineering curriculum which has been developed for the freshman year by the Foundation Coalition at TAMUK.

As offered in 1996-97, the first semester courses for the sophomore year are: Integrated Engineering Systems I (3 hrs + 1 hr design lab), Integrated Mechanics I (3 hrs), Integrated Physics II, (4 hrs), and Integrated Mathematics III, (3 hrs). The second semester courses are : Integrated Engineering Systems II, (3 hrs + 1 hr design lab), Integrated Mechanics II, (3 hrs), and Integrated Mathematics IV, (3 hrs). Details of the 1996-97 implementation of the courses are described, as well as the design and use of a specialized modern technology enabled classroom for cooperative/active learning.

INTRODUCTION

The team members of the Foundation Coalition at Texas A&M University-Kingsville (TAMUK) for the development of a second year integrated engineering curriculum were: Dr. William Heenan, Team Facilitator-ChE, Dr. Robert McLauchlan-ME, Dr. John Chisholm-NGE, Dr. Robert Tucker-ME, Dr. John Taylor-Math, Dr. Mario Medina-ME, Dr. Paul Cox-Physics, Dr. Ron Matthys-CE, Dr. Kambiz Farahmand-IE, Dr. Rajab Challoo-EE. Drs. Heenan and Mclauchlan are the respective chairs of the ChE/NGE and ME/IE departments at TAMUK. Dr. John Taylor left the university in Summer 1996 and Dr. Antonie Boerkoel-Math was his temporary replacement for the Fall 1996 semester. Dr. Louis Thurston-Math is the permanent Department of Mathematics member of the second year curriculum development team for the Foundation Coalition. There are now seven tenured and three untenured faculty on the team.

In the planning year (1995-96), the team began in with the premise that there would be the following course sequences in the sophomore year:

Four integrated courses (Systems I, Mechanics I, Physics II, and Mathematics III) in the first semester of the sophomore year, for a total of 14 semester hours

Three integrated courses ( Systems II, Mechanics II, and Mathematics IV) in the first semester of the sophomore year, for a total of 10 semester hours

A potential list of 60 engineering topics to be covered in the sophomore year was supplied to the team.[1,2] The team then went through a brainstorming session and added 12 more topics to list. Table 1 lists the potential engineering topics.

The Affinity Process was then used to group the sophomore topics and the Modified Nominal Group Technique was used to prioritize the topics developed. The groups fell into two categories, Systems and Mechanics. Consensus decision making was used to arrange the groups into four courses, Integrated Systems I and II, and Integrated Mechanics I and II.

AFFINITY PROCESS

The purpose of the Affinity Process is to organize large sets of items, generally more than twenty, into smaller sets of related items. Each team member was assigned seven different engineering topics which they wrote on a self-adhesive Post-it-note. All the Post-its were then posted on a wall. Team members then silently moved the Post-it cards around, grouping cards which have an affinity, together. When the grouping stopped a header card for each group which captures the theme was written. The 72 topics were reduced to 8 groups. See Table 2.

TABLE 1. LIST OF POTENTIAL SOPHOMORE ENGINEERING TOPICS up

TABLE 2. REDUCED GROUPINGS up

MODIFIED NOMINAL GROUP TECHNIQUE

The Modified Nominal Group Technique is a technique to help a team or group quickly reduce a large list of items to a smaller number of high priority items. The process uses a high degree of team agreement and consensus building which promotes team ownership. In this case the items in each grouping were divided by 3. This was the number of votes each team member had. Each team member used his votes to select the items he thought were important. Each item was limited to a maximum of three votes from a single person. The items in each grouping were prioritized accordingly.

COURSE DEVELOPMENT

Based on the prioritization of topics, the topics fell into two categories or two subject matters, Systems and Mechanics. After the time for each topic was agreed upon, it was decided to develop four courses, two Integrated Systems and two Integrated Mechanics courses.

Second semester Physics II was the next course to be developed and integrated with the Integrated Systems I and Integrated Mechanics I courses. It was noticed that several topics in the usual Physics II course were covered adequately in the Systems courses and did not need to be covered again in Physics. These topics were: Capacitance and Dielectrics, Current and Resistance, Inductance, and Direct Current Circuits. Elimination of these topics in the Physics course would allow some topics in Modern Physics to be taught such as Relativity and Quantum Physics. The sequence of Physics topics was then integrated with the Systems courses and Mechanics courses. The resulting sequence of Physics topics is shown in Table 3.

TABLE 3. PHYSICS TOPICS up

The Integrated Mathematics course sequence was the final component to be integrated with respect to the curriculum. The usual mathematics course taught at this time (first semester) in the traditional sophomore engineering curriculum was Calculus II. However, what is really needed for the Systems, Mechanics, and Physics II courses are the topics covered in Calculus III. Fortunately, the material covered in Calculus II is not a prerequisite for Calculus III. Therefore, it was decided to reverse the traditional sequence of Calculus II and Calculus III. While the topics of Calculus III integrated well with the other courses in the curriculum, the timing or time allotment was inadequate. There was insufficient time to teach the mathematics needed for the physics material. Therefore, the topics in Integrated Physics II were rearranged to allow sufficient time to teach the necessary mathematics. The total resulting sophomore year curriculum is shown in Table 4.

CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION

In 1996-97, the integrated sophomore engineering curriculum was taught in a single classroom which can accommodate up to 30 students. The classroom is 40 ft. long by 23 ft. wide. Sixteen Pentium based (100 MHz) computers are on tables along the side and back walls. The computers are networked together with a Pentium 133 MHz server, and also have access to the Internet. At the front of the classroom is the professors' computer with LCD projection capability. The core of the classroom consists of 8 circular tables and chairs on rollers suited for collaborative/active learning.

Software available for students and faculty consists of Microsoft Office including Word, Project, Excel, Power- Point, Access, and Visual Basic. Other software is: URL, Netscape, Eudora, Mathematica, Maple, MatLab, C++, MSC, FORTRAN 77-90, and CadKey.

TRAINING

In 1995-96, all the faculty involved receive specialized training in Collaborative/Active learning, C Programming, Maple, Mathematica, MatLab, and Excel/PowerPoint in using it in offering the integrated sophomore curriculum. The experience obtained in offering the course during 1996-97 has indicated that the faculty need additional training in doing Collaborative/ Active learning, as well as an additional year of experience.

Scheduling early session time for a "booster shot"/review of collaborative/active learning processes would also be of great benefit to the students. It would reinforce their sense of being in a learning community, and enhance the integration from the freshman to the sophomore year of the Foundation Coalition curriculum.

TABLE 4. SOPHOMORE CURRICULUM AT TAMUK (1996-97) up

FIRST PROTOTYPE OFFERING

During 1996-97, the Foundation Coalition sophomore curriculum was offered for the first time at Texas A&M University - Kingsville. Table 5 summarizes the prototype course offering weekly schedules for the Fall 1996 and Spring 1997 semesters. These courses were all held in the second year classroom discussed above. This classroom is designed to support the use of cooperative/active learning in delivering the integrated curriculum through the use of appropriate technology. There were a maximum of 15 students in Fall 1996 and 14 students in the Spring 1997 semesters.

Periodically during the Fall and Spring semesters, the Sophomore/Second Year Curriculum Team leader has held feedback/focus group sessions with the students. This parallels what the Foundation Coalition has done with the Freshman/First Year Curriculum students. These sessions have lead to load balancing among the components of the sophomore curriculum and modification to find the right faculty mix for the second year team. It has also lead to more optimal interaction of the faculty teaching team members amongst themselves and with the students.

ACKNOWLEGDGMENTS

This sophomore curriculum is the direct result of the support given to the Foundation Coalition by the Engineering Education Center of the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement No. EEC-9221460. Special thanks are given to Dr. Antonie Boerkoel, Dr. Rajab Challoo, Dr. Paul H. Cox, Dr. Mario A. Medina, and Dr. Louis H. Thurston, who taught in the curriculum this year. The support provided by the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering, and the administration at Texas A&M University - Kingsville is also acknowledged. Finally, very special thanks are also extended to our students for participating in this endeavor.

REFERENCES

1. Foundation Coalition Workshop coordinated by CEvces, Dcordes and the University of Alabama Coalition Team (UACT)

2. Froyd, J.E., "Developing a New Sophomore Engineering Curriculum," 1994 Frontiers in Education Conference Proceedings.

TABLE 5. INTEGRATED ENGINEERING SOPHOMORE YEAR CURRICULUM up

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