2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering Technology programs provide students with an applications-based approach to learning technical content with the goal of better preparing students for the evolving demands of industry. Specifically, as society shifts more towards automation, providing graduates with expertise in sensors and calibration, programmable logic controllers, process troubleshooting, robotics and electrical power is critical. For an Instrumentation Control Systems Engineering Technology (ICET) Program at Louisiana Tech University, hands-on projects are consistently threaded throughout the curriculum resulting in graduates who can design, plan, research, evaluate, test and implement electrical and electromechanical systems that span multiple engineering disciplines.

To push the curriculum and its graduates forward, ICET faculty members are empowered to continuously develop and improve activities and projects for core courses. In Spring of 2022, a systems-level project was integrated into the sophomore-level Applied Thermodynamics course. A thermoelectric cooling system (TeCS) was developed in-house to allow students to experience and measure quantities related to the First Law of Thermodynamics.

The students purchased a low-cost TeCS kit consisting of individual components, which they assembled. Beginning in the first week, the students utilized the TeCS to apply thermodynamics concepts and continued to use it throughout the course. The students measured temperatures, air flow rates, mass, electrical current, and voltage to analyze the energy inputs and outputs of the system. The course material was designed to increase their understanding and intuition of fundamental principles through the hands-on projects related to their systems, culminating in a thorough analysis of the entire system.

This study assesses the impact of the TeCS on engineering self-efficacy using a validated pre- and post-survey. The survey addressed two main categories: general engineering and engineering skills, with the latter targeting the areas of experiments, tinkering, and design. The findings indicate statistical significance across both categories with the skills of design and tinkering exhibiting the most substantial significance. This paper will provide an analysis of the impact of the project on student self-efficacy throughout the course.