An opinion piece in Scientific American [1] discusses how a fraction of students ultimately complete a STEM degree and cites research [2] that disengagement with traditional calculus courses as one of the causes. It goes on to highlight examples of several promising calculus reforms and recommends that STEM faculty take the lead in introducing changes by collaborating and co-creating across disciplines to make mathematics more relevant and interesting to students. Feedback from module surveys indicate that students learn much better when the link between theoretical and practical knowledge is captured and echoes pedagogical literature. The author introduces past experiences of active learning approaches to enhance the teaching of mathematics to first-year engineering students. Class discussions incorporate real-life engineering applications highlighting example problems from a wide variety of core engineering modules such as Fluid Mechanics, Vibration, and Mechanics of Materials. The impact of this approach has not been directly measured and documented for the module being discussed here and is motivated by encouraging student feedback where they shared that they find the teaching interesting, fun, engaging, and interactive. The present concept paper therefore outlines how past pedagogical practice have influenced the enhancements in the delivery of engineering mathematics with a particular focus on interdisciplinary approach. It then goes own to demonstrate some examples of implementation and offers initial reflections based on student feedback. Finally, the author proposes future steps of detailing the effect on student learning experience via class surveys, interviews and making comparisons to comparably taught modules
