2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Career exploration for middle and high school students from underrepresented groups in STEM is of paramount importance for several compelling reasons; envisioning themselves as active participants in these fields, developing a clear understanding of the diverse range of opportunities, providing resources and support for their considerations in STEM careers, and helping students identify their specific areas of interest and aptitude within the broader STEM spectrum. We collaborated with SW Washington MESA (Math Engineering Science Achievement) to host a workshop for 23 middle school students and 6 high school students. Workshop topics included basic electrical parameters measurement, power electronics, and capacity touch sensors with multiple interesting hands-on activities. This study reports the design, development, and execution of a 45-minute electronics workshop for middle and high school students to conduct hands-on experiences with electronic components.
The 45-minute workshop consisted of 4 hands-on activities with incremental complexity, to introduce the students to basic concepts in electronics, such as resistance, capacitance, Ohm’s law, and frequency. Students were put in groups of 2 or 3, and each group was given a breadboard with 4 simple electronic circuits already built for them. In all 4 circuits, light and/or sound was used to make the experiments more engaging to the students. The hands-on activity started with a very simple circuit consisting of a resistor and an LED. Students were asked to power up the circuit using a battery pack to light up the LED, and then swap the resistor with a larger or smaller resistor and observe how the brightness of the LED changed according to Ohm’s law. Then, the circuit was progressively made larger and more complex, by introducing one or two new components in each step. In the second circuit, students learned how instead of swapping the resistor, they can use a potentiometer to control the brightness of the LED. Next, a capacitor was added, to teach the students the concept of energy storing elements. Finally, students learned how a timer IC can be used to blink an LED and play tones with various frequencies on a speaker. For each section, after presenting some basic theory, students received instructions on how to power the circuit, apply small changes, make observations, and interpret them.
The post survey was conducted to assess students’ engagement and interests to the workshop and electrical engineering as a career. Most of the participants declared the workshop was extremely interesting or interesting. A majority of them agreed or definitely agreed that the workshop improved their understanding of electrical components through the hands-on activities. More than half of middle school participants picked playing with the speaker as the most fun activity. Students picked the blinking LED experiment as the second most fun activity. More than half students indicated that they are interested in pursuing a career in Electrical Engineering. This collaborative work with MESA shows that short, interesting hands-on activities using inexpensive electronic components can effectively improve underrepresented students’ engagement and attention to the electrical engineering discipline.