Project-Based Learning for a Second-Year ECE Design Course

The second and third “middle year” curricula of typical undergraduate electrical and computer engineering (ECE) programs consist of technical courses that teach students the fundamentals of their field. Project-based learning that involves more authentic applications of knowledge is often absent from these courses. These years have notable attrition, but relevant design projects can motivate engineering students by reminding them what they enjoy about the field and showing them that their work can benefit society. In this paper, the author describes a project for a second-year ECE laboratory design course where students design a miniature autonomous tractor robot. This project was created to use skills across first- and second-year courses to make a challenging but achievable capstone aligned with Virginia Tech’s ECE curriculum revision that expands the range of disciplinary experiences for students. The foundational knowledge students will be required to integrate into their de- sign are a simple controls system, microcontroller programming, Bluetooth communication, and circuit design. This paper gives all project assignment materials and an example solution, which is detailed in the sub-system unit tests. The effectiveness of this project in terms of the quality of the materials, the alignment of skills to course goals, the appropriateness to the relevant student population, and encouraging student engagement were qualitatively assessed by pilot studies of usability and faculty assessment. The results verified that this project was designed well and is a good fit for the course. Other benefits of the project’s design are that its context and goals can be adapted between semesters to prevent cheating or to scale the difficulty for the students. The amount of support provided to students from the setup materials can be adapted based on student experience. The assessment of this project showed many options to extend the hardware, software, or theoretical difficulty if needed. When implemented, this project should lead to the integration of technical skills between courses, expose gaps in knowledge, and encourage students to engage with a relevant design context.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Schuman, Andrea

Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair

• Martin, Thomas L.
• McNair, Lisa D.

Committee member dc:contributor.committeemember

• Dunning, Scott

• Project-Based learning
• Curriculum development
• ECE education
• Culture shift
• Discipline expansion

Statement dc:rights

• Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/112955

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/112955