5.1 Keynote Presentation 2

On being the right size

Professor Stephen Beck

University of Sheffield

Laboratory teaching has always been the Cinderella of the engineering curriculum. It is a vital element of the student's education and requirement of accreditation. However, it is generally run as a cottage industry with staff putting on a few labs to support their courses and students rotating through a series of experiments out of time and sometimes only vaguely related to their teaching.

If we postulate that an experiment is a better learning experience when it is closely related both intellectually and temporally to its taught material, then there are a number of efficiency and contextual gains that arise. Stephen Beck will introduce the concept of the Immediacy Index which will allow the measurement of the closeness to the lab to the teaching to the labs and allow the sizing and design of laboratories and equipment to support this approach.

The department of Multidisciplinary Engineering Education at Sheffield has been teaching students at scale with labs that coordinate with lecture for the past six years. This gives a very high Immediacy Index which should more effectively support student engagement and learning. The speaker will use this experience to elucidate the advantages of teaching at scale.

5.2 Self-Reported Success Criteria and Barriers for First Year Undergraduate Laboratories

Anita Banerji, Jennifer Slaughter and Thomas Rodgers

University of Manchester

Understanding student’s thoughts around undertaking laboratory sessions is important as it allows laboratory providers to address concerns and explain misconceptions on success. This work explores self-reported barriers and success criteria for first year undergraduates in Chemical Engineering labs and compares them to students from Chemistry and Physics. Students were questioned at two time-points: The very first week of labs and at just over halfway through their first year. Open questions were included asking students to state their definition of success and the barriers to achieving this allowing a thematic analysis to be undertaken. Many of the barriers occur before and during the experimental work while the success criteria during and afterwards. The most often stated success criteria in all three subjects and both surveys are ‘gaining good quality results’ and ‘completing the experiment’. The first or second most often stated barrier is a theme related to practical competence. For Chemical Engineering, ‘prior knowledge’ is an often-stated barrier for the first survey but reduces for the second survey. The results give an important insight into the student view of their lab experience, allowing course directors to optimise pre-lab preparation options and in-lab support to maximise the student’s learning experience."

5.3 Pedagogical Training for Graduate Teaching Assistants in Engineering

Matteo Di Benedetti, Sarah Plumb and Stephen Beck

University of Sheffield

The use of graduate teaching assistants (GTA) to support the teaching activities of higher education institutions has been growing over the years and it is now a well-established practice. During their doctoral studies these postgraduate students are supported to build a strong research profile, but very little is done to support the development of their teaching. Conventionally, training, usually consisting of workshops, remains general and overemphasize policies, this does not often provide sufficient preparation for in-service teaching. In Multidisciplinary Engineering Education, a specialist department at the University of Sheffield dedicated to delivering practical teaching for all students in the Faculty of Engineering, a new GTA training method has been offered to all GTAs working in the Structures Lab. Aiming to overcome the shortcomings of traditional GTA training, this new method is continuous, activity-specific and introduces GTA to pedagogical concepts contextualised to lab settings. This is accomplished by stimulating GTA self-reflection and boosting their confidence through peer teaching. Based on the feedback collected from GTAs during a full academic year, it was clear that the element of continuity was instrumental to the success of the new method as it provided constant support to the GTAs. Further analysis also showed that this method was effective in developing GTA student-centred teaching and reflective practice which in turn improved the experience both for them and the students whose learning they are key to supporting.

5.4 Experience from adapting learning for practical electrical engineering laboratory experiments under remote teaching circumstances

Matthew Ritchie, Chin-Pang Liu, Chow Yin Lai , Gerald McBrearty and Ryan Grammenos,

University College London

This presentation covers the adaptions made in teaching within the undergraduate laboratory modules for the Electrical & Electronic Engineering (E&EE) degree within UCL. The changes required complete adaption of practical face to face (f2f) teaching into a hybrid of limited f2f, remote experimental work and simulation. In making these changes the students were able to complete the construction of fundamental circuity remotely at home using the provided National Instruments (N.I.) MyDAQ hardware. By using the MyDAQ hardware it was possible to enable a blend of simulation and hardware tasks such that students can start with simulating given circuits and once their lab equipment arrived at their home address they can transition to hardware content using the same interface. This presentation summarises our findings when adapting the module to a hybrid of remote and f2f teaching.

5.5 Using TinkerCAD to enhance Arduino-based freshman electronic circuit labs

John. J. Healy

University College Dublin

We conduct introductory electronic circuit labs using Arduino kits for a number of reasons: undemanding lab hardware requirements, low cost, and an opportunity to introduce students to analogue/digital interfaces very early in their education. To compensate for hardware, space, and TA contact time limitations, we pair students for these labs. This has positives in terms of teamwork and communication skills but may not result in equal practical experience for both teammates. We use Autodesk’s TinkerCAD online simulation tool to deliver a pre-lab. Students work individually to simulate foundational material for the upcoming lab in an environment with a relatively life-like graphical interface, before building on this work in short labs as a team. This approach is being trialled this year after covid-19 forced us to investigate simulation-only labs last year, with positive results. Our approach retains the benefits of the paired in-person labs but provides students with an unpressured simulation environment in which to experiment individually.