The Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering at UC Riverside has received a $1 million California Education Learning Lab Innovation Grant, in partnership with Cal Poly Pomona, Mt. San Antonio College, and UC San Diego. The project aims to improve outcomes in introductory engineering courses among a diverse group of learners.

UC Riverside mechanical engineering professors Sundararajan Venkatadriagaram and Marko Princevac will lead a group of faculty from the three schools in redesigning a set of six mechanical and chemical engineering courses that address foundational engineering and professional skills, and that contribute to success in subsequent engineering classes. 

The techniques and tools developed by this project will help close persistent gaps in retention and graduation in engineering programs for women and underrepresented minorities. In addition, the project addresses students’ capacity for self-regulation and professional identity. 

The project adopts the Community of Inquiry framework, which sees learning as a collaborative experience. The project implements the framework using a combination of tools, the most significant of which are an adaptive online platform for content presentation and practice testing, in-person sessions, and learning communities. The proposed courses will also integrate engineering applications such as industrial automation with material taught in introductory physics and math classes.  

These educational materials will be held in a peer-reviewed online portal available for any university or community college to use under the Creative Commons License. Once the repository is created, faculty across California can continue to contribute and access modules.