Motivating first year students for an engineering degree

When introducing the Bologna model, the University of Aveiro, in Portugal, added a new course to the Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering study plan, aimed at motivating students, both for the degree and for the profession. The course aims at providing new students with an introduction to Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering and to the main activities involved in the profession. For most of the students, the course is the first contact with electronic technology and equipment in a non-user perspective. In the academic year 2011–12, this course suffered a major reorganization. This paper presents the model, underlying assumptions and options followed when developing the new structure for the course. The main challenge was to achieve these goals, using a “hands-on” approach in a course unit with more than 100 students, making students create useful and working circuits (it is hard to motivate young students based on abstractions), and having a meaningful approach to electronics, avoiding cookbook recipes and effectively creating knowledge for the students. The modifications seem to have been well received by the students, as expressed by the course success rate and the students' responses to the University quality assurance enquiries.