2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Educators tend to build their courses based on their preferred teaching style, but that teaching style often does not align with the needs of the class or take into consideration the changing nature of their student demographics. Furthermore, new educators are often encouraged to use active learning pedagogues, particularly in STEM fields, where students learn best by constructing their own knowledge about a particular subject, but these instructors may have no prior experience in implementing these strategies effectively.

This paper is centered around lessons learnt in the implementation of an introductory electricity and electronics class, which covers various topics including: fundamentals concepts such as voltage, current and Ohm’s Law; use of mathematical skills to solve circuits; hands-on exercises, such as breadboarding circuits; PCB design, fabrication, and soldering; and Arduino programming fundamentals. The class is open to all students at the institution, resulting in a highly diverse population, both in class rank and identity. Any given class will have a mixture of seniors through first-years. Students have typical majors such as Engineering Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, but also atypical majors find value in the course as well, such as Communications, Education Studies, Theater, and others. This wide range of student identities, experience, and academic focus result in very diverse classrooms, which is atypical in engineering, engineering technology or computer science programs.

To teach such a diverse range of students, we developed the Plug -n- Play approach, a flexible pedagogical approach which ensures instructors have a fixed core structure, flexibility in leveraging their own teaching style, and a mechanism for constant reflection which allows for adaptations to the course structure over time. The PNP approach focuses course design around the student experience, while acknowledging and supporting individual teaching styles and teaching methods.

To assess PNP, a classroom observation protocol was developed to evaluate student engagement, as well as examination of sixteen sections worth of grades and student evaluations. The results show that students are highly engaged with the course material, peers in the class, and the instructors. Finally, the PNP approach supports students in building self-efficacy in their abilities as electricity and electronics students