Curriculum Innovation Using Job Design Theory

Abstract

“Introduction to Engineering” was designed in 1994 by a cross-disciplinary group of seven engineering faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The faculty group had recently completed a nine-month team-based professional development program, where they studied, discussed, and reflected upon the learning process. The group was asked by the administration to design a course to improve the retention of freshmen engineering students, with specific emphasis on the retention of underrepresented student groups. This paper highlights the human factors and job design foundations of this course in two ways. First, in that the course itself was created using theories of work motivation taken from classic literature and applied to the “work” of learning. Second, by creating a course that ultimately would be considered service-learning, students and faculty from diverse engineering departments would need and become familiar with human factors in design.