A new "contact-based" first year engineering course

A new first year engineering orientation course has been put in place. The course stresses integration with other first year courses, writing, team building, critical thinking, disciplinary thinking and has a strong problem solving component. Students were randomly selected to participate in the course. Students' attitudes about engineering and the first year experience were assessed using an instrument developed by Besterfield-Sacre and Atman and compared with the normal introduction to engineering course. Students in this course were more positive about their learning experience in the first semester, reported a higher satisfaction with all their courses and were less likely to think that the first year courses were designed to "weed" students out of the program.