Relevance-based learning in students´ early engineering education experience

Providing instruction for a First Year Engineering (FYE) course with intensive use of MATLAB, and a sophomore fundamental engineering Thermodynamics course can present challenges when attempting to find ways to engage students in the deeper meaning of the content. However, the experience of incorporating everyday example framing to relate course materials to student´s contextual environment appeared to favorably influence students´ classroom attitudes about learning difficult concepts as well as help them remember essential elements of the course material. These independent classroom experiences led to the design of an exploratory study examining the students´ self-confidence, motivation, content appreciation, and persistence after incorporating relevance-based activities in these two courses. Preliminary results suggest that students are more engaged in class and retain key conceptual knowledge of the subject. Further, while creating everyday examples, it became apparent that many examples may offer value when used in a variety of fundamental engineering and non-engineering courses.