2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Work-in-Progress: A Multidisciplinary Hands-on Course to Guide Engineering Students Toward Becoming Blended Digital Professionals

Presented at Teaching Tools: Problem Solving and Hands-On Teaching (NEE)

The boundaries between different engineering majors are thinning and there is a strong need for all engineering students to work toward becoming blended digital professionals in order to succeed as future engineers. This work-in-progress paper will introduce readers to an interdisciplinary, upper-level course that has been recently developed at the New Jersey Institute of Technology located in Newark, NJ, USA. This course familiarizes students with microcontrollers, an integral part of many modern, technological devices, and their exciting applications in the fields of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Robotics. Using a project-based, hands-on approach, microcontrollers are included as a component part of a broader design activity to introduce students to coding, logic, and automation in the wider context of engineering design. Students from different majors collaborate to work on multiple mini-projects to integrate a programmable system into a working prototype, such as a step counter, automatic plant watering system, and a home security alarm system. Overall, this course provides a foundational understanding of software design and coding, and microcontroller interfacing with sensors, actuators, motors, etc. Students also develop 3D modeling and prototyping skills and are encouraged to use the makerspace. The course further exposes students to the interesting field of data science, as students gather real-life data from sensors and then clean, analyze and create visualizations from the data set using common Python-based libraries. Preliminary feedback from students has been very positive. Students have expressed satisfaction in being industry-ready, especially as they were introduced to Python programming and data science while maintaining an engineering, hands-on context. This paper will discuss why this course was developed, its various components, and its preliminary outcomes. The goal is to enable readers to offer a similar course at their universities or integrate some of these modules into an already existing course that they are teaching.

Authors

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 spectra 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.
Teresa L. Keeler New Jersey Institute of Technology

Download paper (1.27 MB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session