Work In Progress: An Innovative Electrical Engineering Program Integrating Project-Oriented and Lifelong Learning Pedagogies

The electrical engineering (EE) program at the University of North Texas (UNT), Denton started in Spring-2005. The three main objectives of this program are: i) to inculcate strong design skills in the students by means of education through real-life projects team-taught by EE faculty and UNT´s industrial partners, ii) to develop in the students the art of learning to learn (L2L) and thereby foster their life-long learning, and iii) to develop entrepreneurial spirit among the students. Currently, we target not to just meet the ABET criteria corresponding to these objectives, but go beyond to provide to the students the best possible design experience and self-learning opportunities with projects in every semester of the curriculum. We present here in this paper an overview of our program, a strategy for assessment of individual courses as well as the whole program using both formative and summative assessment, and the lessons learned so far