Influences on Freshman Attitudes toward Engineering: Lessons from a Case Study of a Major Engineering University in Pakistan

This `evidence based practice paper' reports influences on freshman attitudes toward engineering at a major engineering university (MEU) in Pakistan. The assessment is based on surveys conducted with incoming MEU students before and after their participation in a one-credit engineering education foundation course (EGR 100). This course is designed to make students passionate about engineering, enable them to become active learners, and prepare them to undertake the rigors of an engineering curriculum. Attitude data was collected at the beginning and toward the end of the course, using a modified version of the Pittsburgh Freshman Engineering Attitudes Survey (PFEAS). Additional items recorded student demographics. Analyses in the paper include pre and post course comparisons of 718 students who completed both the pre and post course surveys. The paper also considers the impact of gender and type of secondary education. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of our findings for engineering education at MEU and other engineering programs.