Scaling up Arizona State University's first-year integrated program in engineering: problems and solutions

Abstract

This paper discusses how scale-up from a pilot of 32 students to 80 students affected the integrated delivery of material in English composition, physics and engineering to a cohort of freshman engineering students. It also discusses how collaborative learning and projects were structured to fit 80 students, the effects of class size on student-to-student interaction and student-to-faculty interactions in and out of the classroom and what modifications were made to the classroom facilities to accommodate these projects. Although there were some detrimental effects accruing to the scale-up, for the most part, student performance was unaffected or slightly improved.