Work in progress — Design in first year engineering

This paper examines first year (freshman) design experiences. The work described in this paper evaluates various approaches to design education taken by engineering institutions across North America. Additionally, this paper identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches to design education, particularly in the context of the first year design experience within the Schulich School of Engineering (University of Calgary), by comparing the 2002 two-course design experience and the 2010 revised single-course experience. Finally, this paper highlights the successes of the single-course experience, and describes future steps that will be taken in the course design.