6.1 Keynote Presentation 3

Laboratory Engineering in the University of Birmingham Collaborative Teaching Laboratory.

Professor Jonathan Seville, Tim Jackson, Aziza Mahomed, Phil Robbins, Edd Kyi, Aruna Mistry, Mala Patel and Adrian Wright.

University of Birmingham

The Collaborative Teaching Laboratory (CTL) at the University of Birmingham is responsible for laboratory teaching in most of the science and engineering subjects. Its five main labs are configured flexibly to enable teaching across the STEM disciplines and are supported by a single team of multiskilled technical staff. Extensive use of pre-lab, in-lab and post-lab Educational Technology is integrated into lab operation and supported by its own specialists. COVID-19 has required a new approach to practical teaching with an emphasis on maximising the necessarily reduced capacity of the labs through a variety of technology developments, enabling remote access wherever possible and developing real-time and recorded lab webinars for students who are unable to be present. We describe these developments through a range of examples across the spectrum of engineering subjects and comment on student experience and feedback. We also comment on lessons learned from simultaneous experience in other STEM disciplines at Birmingham.

6.2 The legacy of Verena Holmes inspiring next generation of engineers

Salman Saeidlou, Rihana Ishaq, Anne Nortcliffe and Nikdokht Ghadiminia

Canterbury Christ Church University

Verena Holmes was born in 1889 in Ashford, Kent, Verena became a pioneer for women in the industry as arguably the first female in the UK to have a full-time career as a professional mechanical, design and biomedical engineer. Verena was an advocate for widening participation in engineering and dedicated to the development of female engineers, she represented a breakthrough for equal rights in the early 20th century. As a creative and talented mechanical engineer, inventor and entrepreneur with own engineering business in Gillingham, Kent. In 1932, Verena Holmes filed a patent for poppet valve for fluid pressured systems, and in 2021 has provided the inspiration to students to conceive, design, implement and operate their own poppet valve. The poppet valve challenging first year biomedical, mechanical and product design engineering students to consider engineering materials, engineering manufacturing, standard components, fixes and fittings, and tolerances considerations into their poppet valve. This paper will provide qualitative analysis of the level of practical engineering learning, and the depth of student learning. Also, the quantitative analysis of the students’ evaluation of the learning opportunity to inspire, develop and stimulate them to be the next generation of engineers.

6.3 Paper Column Competition

Harry Day and Matteo Di Benedetti

University of Sheffield

Could you support your own weight using one square of A4 paper? In this lab we ask you to design the strongest column possible using just a piece of paper. Your column will have to withstand an increasing compressive load - and we will measure its buckling strength when it is crushed. In the past some students have managed to hold a whopping 50kg with their columns, let's see how much load yours can take. No scissors, no glue, no tape - just your ingenuity!

6.4 The Danger Lab

Joanna Bates

University of Sheffield

A sweet way of teaching Health & Safety. Here we show how every student's sweet tooth can be used to teach them risk assessment, experimental design and embedding health and safety in preparation for their practical work.

6.5 PuzzleBot – a mobile robotic platform for remote laboratory teaching and learning

Alexandru Stancu and Constantinos Soutis

University of Manchester

Puzzlebot is a portable electronics platform, developed at the University of Manchester for teaching robotics, automation and control systems at undergraduate and post-graduate level. Unlike other electronic products (Arduino, Raspberry Pi), PuzzleBot has sufficient processing capacity to handle multiple advanced add-on components (e.g. actuators, LiDAR, sonar, HD cameras). This allows the student to use a consistent platform for their entire robotics’ learning journey - from starter kit tutorials all the way to professional prototyping. The PuzzleBot prototype platform has been used successfully during the COVID-19 pandemic into educational environments, teaching remotely classes of UG and PG students in Computer Science, Robotics, Control Systems, and other Electrical and Mechatronics Engineering disciplines. It has been demonstrated that PuzzleBot offers educational value, ease of access, and improved capability in comparison to more expensive commercially available products. Prototypes of the PuzzleBot platform have been tested with two cohorts of 85 MSc taught students in Robotics and Autonomous Systems and 260 undergraduates in Electrical & Electronics Engineering at the University of Manchester. During COVID-19, each student was provided with their own PuzzleBot starter kit (sent by post to their home address), Fig.1. They were then instructed remotely by the academic or teaching assistant to execute lab exercises independently at their own space and time using PuzzleBot AI software and their preferred programming language. This new way of learning will continue beyond COVID-19 giving the student freedom to tackle the exercise, create and implement their own ideas, develop depth and better understanding of fundamental and advanced concepts in programming, control, automation, machine learning and robotics.

Fig.1 The box and a PuzzleBot model (provided by Manchester Robotics ltd., a University of Manchester spinout company)

6.6 Wind Tunnel Project

Paul Watson et al.

Newcastle University