Building Alignment Between Pre-college and First-Year Engineering Programs

Developments in pre-college engineering such as the incorporation of engineering in the Next Generation Science Standards and the rapid growth of formal and informal pre-college engineering programs and activities has resulted in increasing numbers of students arriving in first-year engineering programs with significant prior engineering experience. To assist first-year engineering faculty and staff with improving the alignment of their programs with their students' pre-college engineering experiences, in the first part of this workshop we present a framework we developed to understand how pre-college engineering programs and activities influence students' transitions into first-year engineering programs. Supported by both qualitative and quantitative data, we will describe ways that pre-college engineering activities can both support and hinder this transition. For the second part of this workshop, we will work with the participants to identify and share ways that they recognize elements of this framework in their own first-year engineering programs, brainstorm and share strategies for promoting successful transitions from pre-college to first-year engineering, and ways to differentiate instruction to address the wide range of pre-college engineering experiences represented in the first-year engineering classroom. This workshop presents a means for participants to begin a larger conversation related to understanding the impact of pre-college engineering participation on the first-year engineering experience, and ways that first-year engineering programs can adapt to address the changing conceptions of and experience with engineering of incoming students.