2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

What if students were the teachers? Inspired by the skill-building workshops organized by our undergraduate science and engineering clubs as well as multidisciplinary curriculum taught as part of our university’s sustainability minor program, this student-centered concept led to a series of experiential engineering courses which are fully student-designed, organized, and taught. We began testing this concept in 2020, and since then have run numerous ten week long, 9 learner hours/week pilot courses in many topics: Robot Operating System, Graphical User Interfaces, Embedded Programming, among others. As student-instructors, our primary focus continues to be on giving fellow student-learners the hands-on experience and technical knowledge to confidently build their own projects and participate effectively in technical clubs regardless of education-level or background.

These courses are designed to model the engineering design cycle. Student-instructors, trained in experiential-learning pedagogy, design an immersive, active- and participatory-learning environment, providing practical, foundational experience to complement subsequent theory-based education. By the end of the quarter, learners successfully design, prototype, troubleshoot, and ultimately assemble a functional or creative device while supporting an enduring understanding of the underlying learning outcomes specific to that course topic. To this end, we divide each course structurally into two main phases: a series of smaller, tool-based activities and a larger, team-based design project while always focusing on both technical intricacies as well as the methods of manufacturing required to create a real-world prototype.

In this paper, we will review the progress and outcomes of two student-led courses: Introduction to Electronics and the EDA Toolchain and Introduction to 3D Design and Fabrication. Both classes forgo some theory and proof-based rigor in favor of a more empirical first exposure to foundational topics. In the Electronics course, learners are supported in learning and applying basic theoretical concepts and common electrical components in circuit designs of increasing complexity. The class then switches focus to the EDA toolchain where learners successfully follow the design cycle, resulting in a Printed Circuit Board encompassing everything learned into a device such as a desktop fan. The 3D Design course follows a similar structure: learners are guided through design principles in CAD software using increasingly complex tools in multiple design challenges. The course then switches to 3D printing, emphasizing the iterative design cycle where teams create art or a functional item of their choosing.

Our classes present strong evidence that courses taught in this particular style are more engaging and offer more opportunities for participation than standard introductory courses. We have observed a more diverse student body with higher quality student participation. Despite the 21% female-identifying population in our School of Engineering, our courses have a more balanced 45:55 gender ratio this year, structurally promoting a diversity of opinions and backgrounds. The advantages granted by having student instructors also support a more inclusive learning environment where, during class, there is reduced stigma for wrong answers leading to both much more immediate recognition of misunderstanding and an innate ability of student-instructors to empathize with and unpack concepts with their peers. The more casual and approachable learning environment has resulted in a boost in learner and student-instructor confidence and the achievement of complex final projects among learner-teams.