2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper explores the hands-on approach to teaching interdisciplinary engineering principles in a first-ear Engineering Fundamentals course. A novel mechatronic system was employed to provide students exposure to engineering design, teamwork, and problem-solving during the introduction of the Mechanical Engineering Program. The Engineering Fundamentals course is designed to provide, among other learning objectives, exposure to the six engineering majors offered at our institution: Aerospace, Biomedical, Civil, Computer, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering. The course is organized into eight sections, each with a maximum of 24 students. Six instructors —one from each major—rotate among the eight sections over six weeks to present their specific discipline, facilitating interactive activities introducing the fundamental concepts and approaches of each field to students. The course creates a dynamic and comprehensive exploration of the various engineering programs, fostering student engagement as they discover each major. The activity analyzed in this study was the Mechanical Engineering Day: students assembled and operated a novel mechatronic arm designed specifically for interdisciplinary engineering education. Mechatronics is a prominent field in mechanical engineering, in which the mechatronic arm stands as one of the most iconic and utilized systems in contemporary industry and research.

The central feature of the mechatronic arm was the safe assemblability of mechanical and electrical components using modular instructions. Of similar importance were the mechanical faults purposefully inlaid to allow a practical review of mechanical principles as they related to a tangible dynamic system. Individual modules of the instructional manual further accentuated mechanical engineering principles such as constrained mechanics as well as electrical and computer engineering principles such as electromagnetism and microcontrollers. This allowed students to review these engineering topics in a multidisciplinary lens fully congruent to the interactive building process.

The activity was framed so that students would assemble the mechanical components, receive structural verification from an instructor, assemble and receive electronics verification, and, finally, upload a test code to the microcontroller to display the robot’s functionality satisfactorily. The instructions manual was structured in six parts: the first five detailed the construction of the mechanical components in a sequential joint-by-joint fashion, with the final part delineating the assembly of the electronic modules on a pre-wired breadboard. Parallel to the assembly process, a questionnaire relating to the manufacturing materials and purpose of design choices (including intentional faults), with a primary focus on the “why?” of critical features, therefore demanding meta-analysis, was to be completed. A post-activity survey was then conducted wherein students would respond to 14 self-assessment questions related to enrichment, collaboration, comprehension, and the broader learning objectives of the course.

From the totality of surveys, we received a clear and substantial majority of feedback being positively oriented. For instance, of the participating students, 89.85% extracted a greater intuitive understanding of mechanical systems, with 84.65% agreeing with the sentiment that the activity significantly helped them understand the interdisciplinary meshing of engineering. Furthermore, 90.48% felt a strong sense of collaboration in being an active contributor for the majority of the activity, with 88.89% feeling engaged with the activity in its complexity overall.
From the conclusive survey data, we observe that the mechatronic arm activity successfully highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of the mechatronic systems in a compact, time-efficient, and relatively complex manner, equipping first-year students with collaborative and analytical skills at an early stage of their engineering education.