Overview

There is an increasing awareness among engineering faculty that our students lack effective reading and problem-solving strategies, which poses significant barriers to their learning. The research basis of this project is that providing students with explicit reading and problem-solving strategy instructions improves their comprehension and learning. Therefore, this project, as a collaborative effort by the faculty of Rowan University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Reading departments, of Tennessee State University’s (TSU) Electrical and Computer Engineering department, and of Camden County College’s (CCC) Engineering Science (ES), investigates a non-intrusive approach that infuses engineering literacy into ECE and ES curricula at Rowan, TSU and CCC with minimal modifications to the existing course materials. In particular, the project is developing a virtual reality theme-based game system and deploying it as a replacement of the traditional laboratory settings of the courses in two ECE core knowledge domains: Digital Design and Circuit Analysis, where a selection of metacognitive reading and problem-solving strategies are unfolded. With no additional software and hardware required, the game system can be installed, configured, and run in any personal computer, making our development cost effective and easily transportable.

Objectives

• Provide an attractive and motivating environment for ECE and ES students to tackle engineering design,
• Impart essential reading and reasoning strategies to promote improved problem-solving skills, and
• Increase retention and recruitment of ECE students, especially underrepresented groups

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0935089. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.