Building Bridges in the First Two Years: Making Connections Among Introductory Mathematics, Science, and Engineering Courses

WPI和许多其他机构的研究发现，在科学和工程教育的头两年里，学生们发现了一组共同的错误：学生们认为数学和科学的入门课程彼此之间或与他们的职业目标没有明显的联系，对学术和工作场所至关重要的技能——沟通、解决问题、团队合作、信息收集和综合——没有得到有意识的培养。WPI的个别学科已经开始通过同侪协助的合作学习、与个别课程相关的学术成功培训、课程中的开放式小组项目以及课程中计算和教学技术的整合来解决这些缺点。这项计划将在这些成功的个人努力之间建立联系，并产生一种独特的跨学科方法来进行数学、科学和工程教育。跨学科联系将通过桥梁项目建立，鼓励学生跨越学科界限携带基本概念。该项目将依靠WPI发达的跨学科本科同伴学习助理社区。尽管WPI创新的项目导向课程为我们的教师提供了这项工作的特殊动力，但这项工作的成果将广泛适用，因为它们将建立在熟悉的基础上，即通常的以学科为基础的入门课程。在现有课程中提供教育和知识统一的增强和补充的结构可以一根一根地编织起来，而不需要对课程和课程进行大规模重新设计的风险或费用。

Studies at WPI and many other institutions have identified a common set of faults running through the first two years of science and engineering education: students see introductory mathematics and science courses as having little apparent relation to one another or to their professional goals, skills essential to academia and to the workplace--communication, problem solving, working in groups, information gathering and synthesis--are not consciously nurtured. Individual disciplines at WPI have begun to address these shortcomings through peer-assisted cooperative learning, academic success training tied to individual courses, open-ended group projects within courses, and integration of computational and instructional technology in courses. This initiative will create connections among these successful individual efforts and produce a unique interdisciplinary approach to mathematics, science and engineering education. Cross-disciplinary connections will be established via bridge projects that encourage students to carry basic concepts across disciplinary boundaries. The program will rely on WPI's well-developed community of interdisciplinary undergraduate Peer Learning Assistants. Although WPI's innovative project-oriented curriculum gives our faculty a special motivation for this undertaking, the outcomes of this work will be widely applicable because they will be built upon a familiar foundation, the usual discipline-based introductory courses. A fabric of enhancements and additions that provide educational and intellectual unity among existing courses can be woven thread by thread without the risk or expense of a wholesale re-fashioning of curricula and courses.