2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work evaluates and compares student satisfaction with two First Year Engineering lab projects delivered remotely versus in-person. Different approaches were taken for the two remote projects: while the Bridge project used mail-out kits, which allowed the remote students to build their own bridges and test them to failure, the Robotic Arm project utilized sophisticated Intel RealSense D435i depth cameras, which gave the students the ability to remotely measure the 3D position of the robotic arm located in university labs. This 3D feedback was then used to modify the instructions sent by the remote students to the robot. The projects were delivered to 115 first-year engineering students in nine LAB sections: three in-person-only, three remote-only, and three mixed. Performance of each method was quantitatively assessed based on exit survey results, and scores from various student populations were compared using two-sample t-tests. The results suggest that using mail-out kits achieved similar student satisfaction levels regardless of the class format (means of 4.10 to 4.65 out of 5), but the method needed a lot of time and tedious labor. Connecting remotely to the lab and using depth cameras, on the other hand, received significantly lower scores than doing the project in person (3.58 versus 4.20), which suggests that true hands-on experience may be important. However, the depth camera method exposes students to sophisticated modern tools and requires nothing mailed out. The authors view the 3.58 score as promising, considering that the method was employed for the first time, and can likely be improved on subsequent implementations. If this is the case, the depth camera method can become an attractive tool for remote labs and projects, both within and outside engineering. The method is rather inexpensive and can be applied to various experimental setups, whenever 3D location of objects needs to be visualized and measured remotely.