During the past several years, NC State University has offered several experimental courses designed for the first year student in engineering; IMPEC, an integrated approach to mathematics, physics, engineering, and chemistry; E123, a mechanical dissection course which is now linked with the first year writing and composition course; and ECE 292D, a hands-on team based design course offered to upper class students as well. All were offered as an alternative to the introductory course (E100) that had little academic content, no engineering problem solving, and consisted of a large lecture room format with information dissemination as the major goal. Although the alternate courses were excellent and well received by the students, none could be easily scaled up to accommodate 1100+ freshmen engineering students. In 1996 and again in 1997, a new version of freshmen engineering (E497F) was offered that incorporated many of the elements of the alternative courses. This was offered to 250-350 engineering freshmen randomly selected each year