ENGR 1L

The end-of-quarter robot is a major design project where student teams design and construct an Arduino-controlled machine. The robot is built partially from components supplied by us and also from purchased or "found" materials which students procure on your own. The robot must meet the design criteria and be delivered for a public presentation during finals week. Overall, the robot, upon pushing a start button, must do ‘something interesting’ for a period of time after which it must complete its action(s) autonomously and be reset in order to repeat the action(s). The definition of ‘something interesting’ is completely up to the students, but at a minimum must involve some kind of motion which can be seen from a reasonable distance (10 ft). Along with motion, the machine may emit sound, light, or anything else that is appropriate. It is up to each team whether the machine does something "useful", or whether it exists only to amuse, delight, or otherwise amaze the audience.

This culminating project proves to be very challenging, largely given the time frame, but also very engaging to the students as they can design and build anything they like. We work hard to scaffold the skills they need to complete this project throughout the course, with extra emphasis on the design process around weeks 8-10. The show itself is very successful. We invite alumni, industrial judges, and faculty to act as judges and review the projects in a science fair-style setup. The judges are always very impressed with the students creativity and final projects!

In this introduction to engineering lab course, there is a variety of student backgrounds, skill sets, and familiarity with lab topics and activities. As instructors, we must balance those who have taken an 'intro to engineering' type course before or worked on high school robotics teams, with those who have had no exposure at all. Placing students on teams is one way to keep students engaged, as peer learning is an effective way to teaching these concepts. In fact, since moving to the SCALE-UP classroom in Alameda Hall, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of peer learning!

An additional way to mitigate these differences in abilities is to offer challenges in the form of extra points opportunities. These could be activities such as the paper circuit shown where individual students can be introduced to electrical concepts in a creative way, or they could be artistic efforts such as the robot poster competition for the robot show. More often, extra points opportunities are related to lab activities to further challenge their abilities. For example, we have an LED flasher activity that follows the 'Circuits' unit where LEDs are first introduced. As part of this lab, there are extra points available if students go above and beyond what we've taught them and they implement arrays of LEDs to accomplish specific lighting patterns (see video). This not only gives students something to strive towards, but also keeps them interested if the material is something they've experienced before.

The other added benefit that all extra points opportunities can be done individually. In general, for circuit and programming extra points, students can also work with TinkerCAD to simulate their code and circuits as an additional learning element, without the need to take kits home to physically build. Often students who are high achievers, may be on teams with those who are less high achievers, this gives them a method to increase their own grades to where they have expectations for themselves. This helps team storming stages lead to effective norming and performing stages. Students also use the extra points to better understand the concepts or if they simply want the additional challenge.