Annual Conference & Exposition : final program and proceedings. American Society for Engineering Education最新文献

In modern Electrical Engineering degree programs, MATLAB is often one of the first coding experiences a student is exposed to. Most introductory robotics courses that combine hardware and software require students to understand C (typically learned during junior year) or require part of the course to teach coding syntax. In order to introduce robotics and cyber-physical systems earlier in the curriculum, we have developed an interface to allow students to remotely control a wireless microcontroller (e.g., Arduino MKR 1010) using MATLAB. This interface comprises two halves: 1) a MATLAB class that abstracts UDP commands transmitted over Wi-Fi, and 2) a custom C++ library for receiving, parsing, and responding to commands over UDP, as well as streaming data back to the client. The interface leverages students' existing knowledge of MATLAB and bypasses the need for C programming, allowing students to get early exposure to hardware-software integration, signal processing, edge computing, end-to-end platform development, and systems engineering. Our interface facilitates data observation, recording, manipulation, and analysis. Students have access to live data streams, real-time plots of sensor values, and the ability to use the command window to run and test individual commands outside of scripts. We deployed this system in an introductory class where students perform various mechatronic lab exercises and complete a final project where their robot navigates a maze then collects and classifies objects using sensor data and neural networks. We surveyed two semesters of students at the end of the course, and students reported that using this interface enhanced their learning experience despite varied responses about the difficulty of implementation. With the growing importance of data science in electrical engineering, tools like our interface play a crucial role in exposing students to cutting-edge robotics and cyber-physical systems earlier in the degree program. Our interface has been made available on GitHub for any who wishes to implement it.

Bioadhesives are an important subset of biomaterials, which aid wound healing, hemostasis, and tissue repair. In order to advance the field of bioadhesives to promote more regenerative healing, there is a societal need to teach diverse trainees about their design, engineering, and testing. To address this, we deployed a hands-on, inquiry-based learning (IBL) bioadhesives module to middle school students from underserved communities in the Young Eisner Scholars (YES) program. The module, which lasted approximately 3 hr, was designed to teach students about applications of bioadhesives, engineering bioadhesives for various biomedical applications, and mechanically testing their adhesive strength using standard practices. Students who participated in our IBL bioadhesives module displayed significant learning gains by pre/post-test assessment, demonstrating that the module was effective for middle school outreach. Pre/post-survey assessments showed no significant differences in attitudes towards STEM, which was likely due to the fact that students in YES had a strong predisposition for STEM. Overall, results motivate the use of this module, or similar hands-on IBL modules, for outreach with K-12 students who are underrepresented in STEM.

The University of Washington's Engineering Innovation in Health program is a yearlong engineering design course sequence where senior undergraduate and graduate engineering students across different disciplines work in teams with health professionals to address their unmet needs. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, these team- and project-based courses shifted from an in-person to remote course environment. Here, we share innovative teaching strategies for a team-based, remote course environment. We show how this shift affected productivity by comparing survey results from before (in person) and during (remote) the pandemic. Preliminary results show that overall project outcomes and productivity were as high or, in some cases, higher during the pandemic than prior to the pandemic. These findings suggest that the innovative remote teaching strategies implemented by the teaching team provided effective options in the absence of certain hands-on experiences that are considered critical to engineering capstone design courses. A discussion on these teaching strategies in the context beyond the pandemic are considered in the discussion.

Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, many universities and outreach programs have switched to online learning platforms, which inhibits students from completing formative hands-on experiments. To address this, we developed a series of at-home experiments for undergraduate engineering students and adapted one of these experiments for outreach purposes. This experiment was well received by middle school students in the Young Eisner Scholars (YES) Program and resulted in significant learning gains by pre/post-test assessment. Additionally, students showed enhanced attitudes toward science after completing their at-home experiments, as measured by pre/post-surveys. These results motivate the use of similar at-home experiments with virtual instruction to remotely teach engineering concepts to diverse, underserved communities during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

The purpose of this theory-to-practice paper is to discuss complex systems research needs within engineering education. We provide a comprehensive definition of complex systems educational research (Hilpert & Marchand, under review; Jacobson et al., 2016) and an overview of methods specific to the approach (Hollenstein, 2013; Koopsman & Stavalomsis, 2016; Strogatz, 1994). After this, we delineate a research-based framework that can be used to develop and conduct complex systems research and evaluation. We identify two areas within the field of engineering education where complex systems research can be useful: 1) educational research focused on student interaction and cognition and 2) assessment and evaluation of collaboratives such as grant funded projects and communication/ publication networks. We discuss existing literature in these spaces, and then outline the critical research needs for engineering education. We address each of these critical needs with an eye on theory as well as methodological and analytic techniques that can be used to design and conduct complex systems research and evaluation in engineering education settings and contexts. The result is a set of specific guidelines that researchers can use to move complex systems research forward in engineering education. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number NSF DUE #1245018 and partial support was also provided by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, Grant No. P20GM109025.