Using Start-Up Questions to Effectively Prepare Engineers for the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam

The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam is important to university students who plan to pursue a professional engineering license, and civil engineering has the highest proportion of graduates that eventually become licensed. An important step in this process is to prepare university students to take and pass the FE exam prior to graduation. Many different methods have been implemented to prepare students for the exam. The study described herein sought to prepare students for the FE exam while they were enrolled in required undergraduate courses that cover core civil engineering topics on the FE exam. Students at two different universities were tasked with completing FE-style questions on quizzes to prepare for the FE exam while enrolled in the following courses: dynamics, statics, fluid mechanics, structural analysis, and reinforced concrete design. In each course, the FE-style questions were based on questions published in FE review manuals, textbooks, or a NCEES practice exam. Each question was focused on a single topic, normally administered as multiple choice, presented at the beginning of a class period to review material (i.e., start-up, concept check, review quiz, etc.), and required to be solved by students within a short amount of time (e.g., 5 minutes) to simulate the FE exam. Approximately 10 FE-style questions were presented to students in each class over the term. After completing the quiz questions, class time was dedicated to discussing the solution and approaches to solving these types of problems. Later in the term, students were presented with similar FE-style questions a second time on an assessment. Both attempts were part of the grade in the courses. To assess if the objectives of this study had been achieved, individual quiz question scores from the first and final assessments were compared to determine if student performance improved throughout the course. Furthermore, a student perception survey was administered before and after implementing the FE-style questions to determine how this review method affected students' familiarity with the FE exam, their confidence in passing the FE exam, and their preferred FE preparation method. Results from the study indicated that students were significantly more familiar with the FE exam, FE-style questions, and FE exam expectations. By the end of the study, 57% of students were confident that they would pass the exam and only 6% were not confident. Students appreciated the opportunity to review more questions in class and thought using the transition time at the beginning of class to review the material with FE-style questions was a good use of time. Furthermore, student performance on the FE-style quiz questions significantly increased; students correctly answered 73% of the FE-style questions presented on their second attempt near the end of the semester. FE-style start-up quiz questions were a good use of time and provided significant benefits to the students throughout this study.