The impact of a living learning community on first-year engineering students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of an engineering living and learning community (ELC) on first-year engineering students. A control group of non-ELC students was used to compare the experiences of the ELC participants. Analysis of survey data showed that there was significant differences between the ELC students and the non-ELC students in how they responded to questions regarding social support, academic support, connectedness to campus, and satisfaction with the College of Engineering and the institution as a whole. Particularly, there were significant differences between ELC and non-ELC students for questions related to feeling like part of an engineering community, having strong relationships with peers, belonging to a supportive peer network, studying with engineering peers, and spending time with classmates outside of class.

Keywords:

• engineering living and learning community
• first-year students
• residential programmes

About the authors

Margaret A. Flynn works in the field of higher education residential life. She has an MA in Higher Education, Administration from Rowan University, and a BA in Communications from Temple University.

Jess W. Everett has worked in four distinct areas: waste management operations research, contaminated site assessment and remediation, education innovation, and sustainable engineering. He has employed a wide variety of techniques, including computer modelling, laboratory experiments, field testing, and surveys. His current research focuses on energy conservation, alternative energy generation, engineering learning communities, and hybrid courses (courses with classroom and online aspects). He has BSE, MS, and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University.

Dex Whittinghill received his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1984, and has taught at the Rowan University for 18 years. He has been Moderator of the Isolated Statisticians, and involved in statistics education with the ASA/MAA Joint Committee, the MAA's SIGMAA on Statistics Education, the ASA's Advisory Committee for Teacher Enhancement, as Data Sets and Stories editor for the Journal of Statistics Education, is currently Secretary/Treasurer of the ASA's Statistical Education section. His current interests include co-author-consulting with Rowan faculty, design of experiments, and statistical education.

Additional information

Funding

The ELC studied was created as part of grant 0806600 funded by the US National Science Foundation.