2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Advanced Microfabrication course is an interdisciplinary graduate course that has students from the Nanoscience and Microsystems Engineering (NSME) Program (interdisciplinary) as well as students from Mechanical Engineering. The course consists of a series of lectures and hands-on labs meant to complement the lectures which are dedicated to advanced micro/nano fabrication. The course material is highly interdisciplinary with topics from chemistry, physics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, chemical engineering, statistics, material science and biomedical. The lab component of the course is meant to strengthen the students’ understanding by providing hands-on real-world experience in a cleanroom. This study compares final exam grades of graduate (MS and PhD) students who have taken the course (n=97 students) over seven courses. The NSME students have various undergraduate disciplines (all disciplines of engineering, physics, biology, chemistry, biochemistry, computer science, agriculture etc…). The comparison study investigated two types of comparisons:

1) Compare students from interdisciplinary program and single discipline to determine if interdisciplinary students perform better in a multidisciplinary course.
2) Determine impacts of lab and in-person lectures by comparing students who had a) Lab and in person lectures, b) lab and online lectures, c) no lab and in-person lectures, and d) no lab and online lectures.

The course has been taught from 2017-2024 by the same instructor, and the final exam questions have remained the same. The lectures material, books, and supplemental reading have also remained the same for each course. The results of the comparison study (1) showed that on average students from an interdisciplinary program perform significantly better with an average final exam score of 62.4 ±15.2% compared to ME students (55.0 ±16.8%). The results of comparison study (2) showed students who participated in both Lab and in-person lectures performed significantly better with an average of 66.3 ± 15.06%. The lowest scores came from students who had no lab and online lectures with an average of 50.4 ± 15.67%. Groups with lab and online lectures scored 58.5 ± 18.3% while students with no lab and in-person lectures scored 55.7 ±11.13%. The results demonstrate that the multidisciplinary material of advanced semiconductor manufacturing is best learned through a combination of in-person lectures and hands-on lab experience. The lab component had more impact than the lectures, but online lectures demonstrated lower understanding of the material by students.