Development of a sophomore year engineering program at Texas A&M University

Summary form only given as followsTexas A&M University is a member of the Foundation Coalition. This program, funded by the National Science Foundation, has been working on the educational reform at Texas A&M and the other schools for four years. The Sophomore Team at Texas A&M University began working on the development of a series of engineering science courses in late fall of 1994. The first courses were taught in fall 1995. This paper discusses the development of the courses and the institutionalization of them within the College of Engineering at Texas A&M University. The goals of the coalition are: active and collaborative learning teaming, and the use of technology in the classroom. The Foundation Coalition sophomore engineering educational program was based on the above goals and the use of conservation principles to describe engineering systems. The five courses, the sequencing of the courses, and engineering areas covered are shown in the following table. An effort has been made to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. One measure was to examine the grade point ratios of students in the coalition and in the traditional program. Another is to use similar examination questions and compare the results. This has been done for three of the courses and the results are presented and discussed. The assessment and evaluation area is important and considerably more work needs to be done. An assessment and evaluation plan is described, and future plans for the coalition activities are discussed.