In their own words: the experience of older undergraduate students placed on engineering project teams with traditional first-year students

This qualitative study investigates the experience of older caucasian male undergraduate students placed on design teams comprised primarily of straight-out-of-high-school first-year undergraduates in a first year engineering course. Data collection and analysis were based on the phenomenological method of open-ended interviews with subsequent thematic analysis of the transcripts from which five major themes emerged. Results showed that the older students (1) had a sense helping their younger teammates, (2) believed they took charge of their teams, (3) were apprehensive about being placed on a team of traditional first-year students, (4) felt academically behind their younger counterparts, and (5) received academic help from the younger students on their teams.