WPI's first-year tutorial, an integrated learning community for physics, calculus, and humanities

Through the Davis Foundation, WPI received support for a first-year tutorial, to accomplish the following goals: (1) introduce at the initial level WPI's distinctive project degree-requirement curriculum, measured entirely by first-year outcome learning goals; (2) suggest, through projects, ways that first-year physics, calculus, and humanities and arts could be connected and integrated in a new science/engineering educational experience; (3) explore new internet and video educational technologies and use them to replace portions of the information transfer occurring in conventional courses; and (4) create new faculty-student relationships in different time sequences of exposure, mentoring and coaching. The paper explains how and why goals 1 and 4 were successfully met, 2 partially met, and 3 a significant failure.