Development of Team-Based Hands-On Learning Experiences

Active learning is known to promote a deeper understanding and retention of concepts. Hands-on learning is a particular form of active learning where students engage in a topic in several different ways including sight, sound, and tactile sensory input. While engaging multiple senses, students can interact with other students and reflect on how their understanding of some topic can be used to explain a particular phenomenon. When the hands-on experiences are well-designed, students can go beyond the lecture material and observe how theory is manifested in the real world. Unfortunately, many engineering experiments are costly and complicated, restricting their use to instructional laboratories. One of the goals of this NSF IUSE project is to create simple hands-on experiments that can be highly portable for use in lecture rooms, laboratories, or even dorm rooms. Due to advances in portable data acquisition devices, laptop computers, and affordable sensors, there is an unprecedented opportunity to make hands-on engineering experiments a reality. The use of analog circuits constructed from breadboards and electrical components (resistors, capacitors, inductors, op-amps, etc) has already made considerable inroads in electrical engineering education. One goal of this project is to bring equally effective and affordable solutions to the fields of mechanical engineering (ME) and aerospace engineering (AE). Making ME and AE hands-on experiments more portable and affordable would allow them to be used in different settings such as classrooms and dormitories, but there are significant challenges. Many ME and AE experiments require moving parts, fluid flow under pressure, structures, thermal effects all at a scale that students can see, touch, or hear the physical phenomena being investigated. This research builds upon our previous work in hands-on pedagogy in the ECE education and seeks to apply it to new platforms designed for ME and AE subjects. Among the research questions that are being addressed several stand out: Which topics have the greatest potential for enhancing educational outcomes through hands-on learning? What is the impact of the experiments on student performance, on student interest and confidence in the subject matter, and on long-term retention of the knowledge? Do these experiments have a positive impact on students from underrepresented groups in terms of performance, student interest, and retention? Since hands-on education is often associated with collaboration and group work, what are the best practices for impromptu team work, especially in the context of diversity and underrepresentation in these student groups? To address these research question, the research has several objectives. One goal is to develop experimental platforms and supplemental materials to support the learning of basic concepts and higher-level thinking processes in ME and AE courses. Part of this effort entails designing short learning experiences that are well thought out, and involve adequate levels of engagement and reflection. We also seek to develop appropriate assessment techniques to measure the effect of the hands-on experiments. Finally, we are developing strategies for managing impromptu team-work between small numbers of students so that all team members are equally engaged and included in the learning process. This is particularly important for female and underrepresented groups within STEM fields.