2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This full paper addresses the question of whether introducing a strategic component into team projects leads to greater student learning and participation. This research examines the integration of a financial component, using grain commodities, into a team project in the agriculture sector. Students were given a user-defined project related to agriculture in a freshman-level engineering project class. This project introduced students to new technologies and topics they may not have previously considered within the agriculture field.

A new learning module focused on modeling grain commodities was added to the course, along with a feature for students to sell their acquired grains during the project. The student teams were presented with user scenarios from the agriculture sector, such as challenges related to automated irrigation conservation, equipment safety, and the efficient use of equipment, chemicals, and seeds. The teams were allowed to pick their desired project; however, a commodity was assigned to each project. For example, a project linked to irrigation had corn as the associated commodity. Assigning commodities to the project added a strategy component to the project selection. The students learned about the commodities involved with the project, including corn, cotton, soybeans, and wheat, and they modeled the possible outcomes for both one-year and five-year returns based on historical market data from the past decade.

The teams had to consider both their project’s technical solution and the associated commodity’s financial prospects. The teams were ultimately assessed on a mechatronic prototype using an Arduino and the financial returns achieved from selling their commodity during the project timeframe. Success was determined by the teams’ understanding of the prototype solution for the user and their strategic decision-making in managing commodity trades. Adding the commodity module helped students understand the economic drivers in the agriculture sector and how the global commodity markets fluctuate.

The outcomes of this study were measured using a survey instrument that was administered before the commodity learning module and upon completion of the user-centered agriculture project. This paper discusses the results of the surveys, focusing on the students’ perceived learning regarding commodities and agricultural concepts, teamwork growth, and motivation for engaging in the project with a strategic component included.