Letting Students Learn Through Making Mistakes: Teaching Hardware and Software Early in an Academic Career

• Published in: Association for Engineering Education - Engineering Library Division Papers p. 26.1089.1
• Main Authors: Rodriguez, Derrick, Blacklock, Jenifer, Bach, Joel M
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Atlanta American Society for Engineering Education-ASEE 14.06.2015
• Subjects: Errors; Hardware; Learning; Mechanical engineering; Professional development; Sensors; Software; Students; Teachers; Teaching
• DOI: 10.18260/p.24426

Letting students learn through making mistakes: Teaching hardware and software early in an academic career.A new course is being taught at the Colorado School of Mines in order to develop a consistentframework for the students to learn software and hardware together early in their academic careers.What they learn in this course will be carried out throughout the program in an effort to provide aconsistent baseline for future courses. Students typically have learned programming and hardwareoutside of the Mechanical Engineering Department. The Department is now undertaking this task inorder to develop what they need to know early in their academic careers. The course does not follow thetypical course structure in that it does not have exams and a lot of homework assignments. The coursedoes incorporate a hands-on approach with learning Matlab programming in conjunction with a widearray of hardware including Arduino boards and a multitude of sensors. Students are started off with atwo-week introduction to the software, but then are shifted to learning the hardware through a hands-onapproach in smaller groups. The instructors are very hands-off; thereby allowing the students to makemistakes and learn from these mistakes. The class is generally organized into smaller project groups,with each group assigned a variety of hardware. This hardware includes a multitude of sensors that willbe used throughout the semester. The students are responsible for learning how to control the hardwarewith various software scripts. This course varies from the norm in that it merges software and hardwaretogether with a specific application to future mechanical engineering courses.