ABSTRACT

Engineering - Electrical (55)

This project is a collaboration among Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Howard University, and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology with the University of Albany as the evaluating organization The goal of this proposal is to develop a low-cost, experimentation centric pedagogy that allows faculty and students to implement a laboratory instrumentation based mobile studio environment anywhere (classroom, library, union, dorm, etc.) at anytime. As a part of the project, 20 mobile studio-based demonstrations, 20 in-class activities, and 20 follow-up, take-home experiments are being designed, developed, utilized, evaluated and disseminated for each of two courses (Electric Circuits and Electronics Instrumentation). In these courses, all students are devising their own experimental procedures for each given problem, testing their ideas in class, and then completing an activity outside of class at their choice of time and place. The approach uses an I/O Board, with an estimated cost of $130 that replicates the functionality of an oscilloscope, function generator, multimeter, and power supplies at a significantly lower cost. Students from all demographics -- including those from disadvantaged backgrounds, students with special needs, distance learners, and students attending resource-limited institutions -- can now have 24/7 access to state-of-the-art instrumentation capabilities. This approach allows educators to incorporate more dynamic, hands-on opportunities into the pedagogy to reach and motivate today's more diverse student populations, who typically do not enter college with the same amount of practical experience that prior generations had. The efforts are being guided by an advisory group with representatives from both industry and academia. An extensive evaluation plan, under the direction of an external evaluator, is using faculty interviews, student surveys and interviews, and observations of students to characterize the effectiveness of the approach. The investigators are disseminating their ideas and results through standard publication mechanisms, through a series of faculty workshops and webinars, and through National Instruments's published materials. The broader impacts include the dissemination of the material, particularly though faculty workshops and industrial connections, the involvement of several institutions, including an HBCU, and the K-12 outreach.

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