2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Past research has demonstrated that project-based exercises allow students to build valuable skills, and retain knowledge, which will help them navigate and excel in industry after graduation. Many courses incorporate small projects to keep the courses interesting while reducing the burden of executing extensive projects. Unfortunately, such endeavors, even though valuable, fall short in developing skills needed for the industry and knowledge retention. This paper proposes a basic framework, strategies, pros, and cons, including challenges, for creating project-based courses in which majority of the course assessments are projects, which are either pure hardware, pure software or a mix of hardware and software design components. The Missouri University of Science and Technology’s (S&T) Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Cooperative Engineering Program (CEP) serves as a testbed for the project-based instruction implementation in multiple sequential courses. The paper starts by listing the courses chosen for the proposed project-based curriculum and the rationale behind the chosen courses. Then, for each course, a list of learning outcomes is included along with the proposed learning project-based assessments. The paper ends with a discussion on results obtained, student feedback received, and a proposal on future curricula changes and improvements.

Assessment methods:
• Project completion and demonstration
• Semester-end student instructor evaluations

Statement of results: While students, who took the elective project-based courses, found the course treatment and assessments a valuable learning and skill building endeavor, the number of students participating to take project-based courses was low. The paper discusses possible reasons for this observation.

Topic: Curriculum: Project-based curriculum