ABSTRACT
High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) launched an education project for the fabrication of an accelerator named "AxeLatoon" in 2020 together with the National Institute of Technology (KOSEN). This project aims to improve engineering skills of students and foster the next generation of accelerator researchers by providing hands-on training in the field of accelerator science. In the first year, we collaborated with the NIT (KOSEN), Ibaraki College to build an accelerator. Students took the initiative in this extracurricular activity and challenged building an accelerator. From 2021, we expanded this project to other prefectures and four schools are now participating. The design and fabrication of a small cyclotron accelerator is currently underway. Despite the restrictions on activities and the limited mobility of people due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the project continues to educate students about basic technologies and accelerators. We are holding seminars a few times a month utilizing online communication tools. In this report, we would like to share the status of AxeLatoon's activities based on the actual production of students at KOSEN and deepen the discussion on accelerator outreach programs. © Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
ABSTRACT
All first-year students at the J. B. Speed School of Engineering (SSoE) at the University of Louisville (UofL) are required to complete a two-course sequence. The purpose of the two-course sequence is to introduce incoming students to the fundamentals and profession of engineering. The first course in the sequence is titled Engineering Methods, Tools, & Practice I (ENGR 110) and primarily focuses on introduction to and practice with fundamental engineering skills. The second course Engineering Methods, Tools, & Practice II (ENGR 111) is a makerspace-based course primarily focused on application and integration of the fundamentals learned in ENGR 110. ENGR 111 includes a variety of fundamental skills in its instruction, one of which is programming. Therefore, all disciplines of SSoE engineering students are exposed to the basics and applications of programming through this course sequence. Programming instruction in ENGR 111 is designed to include relevant software development skills that students might encounter in the engineering profession. The students have learned initial programming skills in their ENGR 110 course through the Python programming language. In ENGR 111, students practice programming skills learned in ENGR 110 on two different platforms: Arduino Microcontrollers (Arduino) and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). In normal face-to-face semesters, students are put into teams of 3 to 4 and given modules to develop and practice these skills (two for Arduino, two for PLCs). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ENGR 111 was augmented into a synchronous remote course to avoid close proximity and shared tools in the makerspace. Arduino programming instruction was performed using Tinkercad (tinkercad.com), a website that allows for Arduino programming and circuitry simulations. PLC instruction was performed utilizing a free online PLC simulator website, “PLCfiddle” [1]. At the end of each semester, students take a survey on their perceptions of the course. Included in this survey are questions pertaining to programming instruction. These questions assess student confidence in programming and platform preference. Results of these questions from Spring 2019 (a makerspace iteration) and Spring 2021 (a remote iteration) are compared in this paper. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
ABSTRACT
In this paper we present, as a case study, how the authors conducted online educational activities in some of the study programs followed by students of the Faculty of Automation, Computers and Electronics (F.A.C.E.) at University of Craiova (UCV), what were the academic results of students, and what were their opinions (expressed by answers to specific questionnaires). With this paper we want to present the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education and engineering skills acquired by students for the subjects taught by the three authors of this paper. We are also questioning whether important lessons can be learned from this crisis. We addressed some relevant topics: issues related to the transition from face-to-face teaching to online teaching;problems related to the online examination activity;problems related to the acquisition of practical skills by students. These issues were addressed from both the teachers' and the students' point of view, and the paper presents both the authors' and students' opinions (acquired during online classes or obtained through questionnaires). © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
This paper is focused on a course redesign transitioning from a hardware-based course into a course taught remotely. The J. B. Speed School of Engineering (SSoE) at the University of Louisville (UofL) has a two-course sequence that all first-year SSoE students are required to complete. This two-course sequence is designed to introduce incoming students to the profession and fundamentals of engineering. The first course is titled Engineering Methods, Tools, & Practice I (ENGR 110), and primarily focuses on introduction to and practice with fundamental engineering skills. The second course, Engineering Methods, Tools, & Practice II (ENGR 111) is typically a makerspace-based course primarily focused on application and integration of the fundamentals learned in ENGR 110. Included amongst numerous skills institutionally identified as “fundamental” were programming and basic circuitry. Therefore, all disciplines of SSoE engineering students are exposed to the basics of circuitry and programming through ENGR 111 pedagogy. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this makerspace course is to be taught remotely in the spring semester of 2021. The instructional team felt that there were too many shared tools and teams were too close together to safely continue the course in a makerspace environment. This remote teaching has posed the instructional team some unique challenges due to the hands-on nature of the ENGR 111 course. Students are typically in face-to-face teams of 3 or 4 students and each group is given an Arduino, breadboard, and circuit components. The given assignments start out with basic circuity and Arduino programming, followed by utilizing an Arduino to communicate with created circuits. The assignments are designed to help the first-year students gain comfort in circuitry and programming. The instructional team has decided to use Tinkercad, which is a free online collection of software tools provided by Autodesk. Many people are only aware of Tinkercad as a 3D modeling programming, however in 2017 Autodesk merged its “123D Circuits” into Tinkercad [1] [2]. This makes Tinkercad an ideal platform to use for circuitry and Arduino programming. The paper will further describe the design of the assignments, instructional team expectations from the students, the environment in which the students are using Tinkercad, as well as looking at expected course outcomes using the platform. This topic is a work in progress as data for evidence-based analyses will not be fully procured until after publication. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
Laboratory courses provide an opportunity for students to practice engineering skills in ways not possible in a traditional classroom environment. Hands-on activities challenge their creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. Beyond that, labs are an ideal platform for developing teamwork and communication. In normal circumstances, providing quality lab experiences can be resource intensive and logistically challenging, particularly for large class sizes. This year, new safety measures required by Covid-19 have completely changed the equation, adding constraints few of us could have anticipated a year ago. One solution to the Covid-19 puzzle is remote learning;this might involve video demonstration of experiments, simulations, and/or 'at home' experiments. Another option is to continue to offer in-person labs with added safety measures to include mask wearing, social distancing, and enhanced cleaning. For the Fall 2020 thermal-fluids laboratory course at the University of Virginia (UVA), a hybrid model was adopted. Students were given the option to take the class 100% remotely, or they could attend lab in person every other week. During the second week of the semester, entire sections met online for team forming. Though some attempt was made to group in-person students in the same team, several teams had a mix of in-person and remote students. The curriculum was redesigned into two-week blocks. During the 'on' week, students collected data from an experiment they performed in person or watched virtually. During the 'off' week, they worked in teams on various activities including report peer review workshops, a team project, and post-processing of the previous week's experiments. This paper will discuss how the course design fostered team development in the hybrid learning environment. Metrics from each mode of delivery: in-person and remote, are assessed. These will include performance on individual and team assignments, and team member peer evaluations via Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) evaluations. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced engineering disciplines to rethink practical activities which are imperative for development of engineering skills in higher education. The main challenge is developing new practical activities that suit remote learning whilst maintaining the experiences of an in-person lab session. This paper outlines the development and implementation of a remotely accessible undergraduate laboratory exercise using off the shelf equipment and remote learning software. In the described lab, students learn the fundamentals of digital systems and the process of using software to design logic circuits, through to implementing and analysing these circuits on an electronic board. The remote lab was successfully implemented using a camera, NI ELVIS II device with a Digital System Development Board (DSDB) and programmed using NI Multisim. The paper describes the development and transition of a traditionally in-person lab to a remote application whilst keeping the same intended learning outcomes and making sure a blended approach can be used in the future. Students remotely trigger inputs (as they would do in-person) to see the cause and effect of their design on the real hardware by pairing visual switches on screen to the physical switches on the board. The students use the camera pointed to the device to see how their designs behave when implemented on the real hardware. The designed lab has already been undertaken by more than 100 undergraduate students from a variety of engineering programmes over a series of multiple sessions. The paper discusses the feedback received from the use of surveys, semi-structured interviews and focus groups of students and academics involved in the development of these remote labs. The discussion focus includes the ease of use, relevance to core subject material and if the practical activities help with their understanding of theory. The paper then concludes by exploring future developments as well as the lessons learnt. © the authors, 2021. All Rights Reserved.