2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Increasingly, instructors are challenged by growing complexity in knowledge domains and the need to prepare students with specific skills relevant to an uncertain future. The speed of technological advance and shifting societal conditions make this ever more arduous. One of the promises of project-based learning (PBL) is to cultivate many of the most important student qualities for facing such an uncertain world by exposing them to cross disciplinary problems. Indeed, providing the students with a plethora of perspectives from seemingly unrelated fields enhances their creative problem solving skills and enables them to better adapt to complex scenarios.

This paper describes a multidisciplinary effort between faculty from the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). The project involved students modeling protein folding as a robotic mechanism and studying the problems associated with this complex system from multiple perspectives. After providing a brief technical background about the robotics-based approaches to the problem of protein folding/unfolding, this paper elaborates on the pedagogical elements of the project. Assessment results highlight the student learning outcomes and perspectives on this interdisciplinary, and intercollegiate project-based learning endeavor. The authors comment on challenges and opportunities associated with such PBL efforts and provide suggestions for disseminating these types of impactful PBL initiatives.