Evaluating the Impact of a First-Year Engineering Course Re-design in Students' Sense of Belonging

This evidence-based practice paper aims to gauge the success of implementing instructional changes to a first-year engineering seminar in the sense of belonging of students. This first-year engineering course, EAS199: Engineering Principles at the University at Buffalo, is a seminar that all engineering students take upon admission. The intent of this course is to maintain engineering retention at the University at Buffalo and to encourage a sense of belonging to the major and institution. While retention outcomes have been analyzed at the institutional level, no formal assessment of sense of belonging has been implemented for the course. This study starts evaluating the success of the course re-design. Our research team deployed a retrospective online survey to gauge students' levels of engineering identity, sense of belonging to their engineering major, sense of belonging to engineering classes, as well as their sense of achievement in the different course goals. Through collection of survey data among students who took the course before and after the curricular modifications (i.e. between Fall 2019 and Fall 2023), our team aims to assess the trends in our identified areas. The goal in surveying this population of students is to set a baseline for before the changes to this course were made and evaluate if there is evidence of any positive impact derived from the changes that took place in the most recent years. The survey was deployed among students that took the course in the last four years, including students who are still enrolled in EAS199 at the University at Buffalo. This allows for an analysis of trends in the average scores of their opinions before and after the changes in the course were implemented. Responses collected from 229 students indicate evidence of such positive trends, with the highest mean scores in engineering identity and belonging are identified among students in the latest edition of the course, Fall 2023. All but one aspect of students' perceptions of their gains showed the same positive trend. While not all the differences between the years were significant, the trends were consistently positive, showcasing that on average, the students' perception of gains from the course, including those directly related to their engineering identity and belonging, are increasing.