Assessment of hands-on activities to enhance students' learning in the first year engineering skills course

The engineering skills course at the CQUniversity has very comprehensive curriculum for the first year undergraduate engineering program to meet the pedagogical needs in accordance with both university's and Engineers Australia's objectives. The problem-based educational approach taken has recently incorporated a set of hands-on learning activities to help achieve students' learning goals. An anonymous survey was conducted after the first term in order to evaluate the effectiveness of these hands-on activities and to obtain students' feedback. This paper presents the findings and both quantitative as well as qualitative analysis of these results. The findings of the survey are very encouraging, and provide evidence of effectiveness of these hands-on activities on students' learning. Furthermore, the suggestions received through quantitative and qualitative feedback of this survey will be used for the course improvement in the future.