2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Teaching Engineering Design, Basic Circuit Design and Coding to First-Year Engineering Students Using a 3-D Printed Robotic Hand-Based Project

Presented at First-Year Programs Division (FYP) - Technical Session 7: Making

This is an evidence-based practice paper. Studies have shown that project-based learning has helped students to be highly engaged in their course material as well as their major of study. In this paper, we present a hands-on design project that we have integrated into a first-year engineering design course. Students were taught how to develop basic control circuits and codes for servo motors. These motors were used to control the movement of individual fingers of a robotic hand model. Students then used push buttons to control the robotic hand. To analyze students’ performance, the class was divided into two groups: a control and a treatment group. All students were taught the same concepts, namely, basic circuit building and coding concepts; however, students in the control group did not use the robotic hand to test the circuits and codes they built. Instead, their experience was limited to building servo circuits and writing codes that can change the shaft’s position of a servo motor. As for the treatment group, students tested their codes on servo motors that are embedded in the robotic hand and are used to control the opening and closing of the hand’s fingers. Finally, we compared the performance of the students in both these groups to assess if this activity benefited the students. To do so, we collected student grades for the Activate Servo assignment and final project. We also scored the creativity of their final projects. This paper will provide step-by-step instructions for the implementation of this hands-on project as well as analysis pertaining to student performance and creative design. Importantly, these carefully designed steps provide students with transferable skills that can be applied in various engineering fields.

Authors

Jason Morlock New Jersey Institute of Technology [biography]

Mr. Jason Morlock is an undergraduate mechanical engineering student at New Jersey Institute of Technology and a member of the Albert Dorman Honors College. He has served as an undergraduate teaching assistant for five semesters for the Fundamentals of Engineering Design (FED101) course, a class that introduces first-year engineers to concepts in design and fabrication for mechatronic systems.
Louis Josef Handwerker
Dr. Ludvik Alkhoury New Jersey Institute of Technology [biography]

Dr. Ludvik Alkhoury is the Lab instructor of Fundamentals of Engineering Design; a course that introduces engineering concepts to first-year engineering students.
Dr. Jaskirat Sodhi New Jersey Institute of Technology [biography]

Dr. Jaskirat Sodhi is interested in first-year engineering curriculum design and recruitment, retention and success of engineering students. He is the coordinator of ENGR101, an application-oriented course for engineering students placed in pre-calculus courses. He has also developed and co-teaches the Fundamentals of Engineering Design course that includes a wide spectrum of activities to teach general engineering students the basics of engineering design using a hands-on approach which is also engaging and fun. He is an Institute for Teaching Excellence Fellow at NJIT and the recipient of NJIT's 2022 Excellence in Teaching Award - Lower Division Undergraduate Instruction, 2022 Newark College of Engineering Excellence in Teaching Award, and 2018 Saul K. Fenster Innovation in Engineering Education Award.
Dr. Ashish D. Borgaonkar http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-3375-889X New Jersey Institute of Technology [biography]

Dr. Ashish Borgaonkar works as an Assistant Professor of Engineering Education at the New Jersey Institute of Technology's (NJIT) Newark College of Engineering (NCE) located in Newark, New Jersey. He has developed and taught several engineering courses primarily in first-year engineering, civil and environmental engineering, and general engineering. He has won several awards for excellence in instruction; most recently the Saul K. Fenster Award for Innovation in Engineering Education. His research focuses on increasing diversity in STEM education and the STEM workforce. He has received multiple grants to run workforce development training programs as well as undergraduate research experience programs to train underrepresented minority and first-generation students. He is the Founding Director of NJIT's Grand Challenges Scholars Program. He also has worked on several research projects, programs, and initiatives to help students bridge the gap between high school and college as well as to prepare students for the rigors of mathematics. He is also involved in various engineering education initiatives focusing on the integration of novel technologies into the engineering classroom, and excellence in instruction. His additional research interests include water, and wastewater treatment, stormwater management and pollution control, civil engineering infrastructure, and transportation engineering.

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