While participation in undergraduate research has many benefits for students including increased confidence and persistence in engineering, community college students do not have the same access to research as students at four-year institutions. To address this disparity, we developed a soft robotics-focused undergraduate research lab at a…

Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) sites widely serve as the first major research gateway for undergraduates seeking a structured research experience. Given their lack of prior research skills, and the highly compressed duration of the REU programs, these students frequently encounter barriers to a seamless transition into a new…

This paper examines the effects of hands-on learning in an undergraduate circuits class that is taught to non-majors; i.e., students outside of electrical and computing engineering. The course, ECE3710, is taught in a blended format facilitated by the video lectures prepared for two Massive Open Online Courses developed for the Coursera Platform.…

The haptic paddle is a force-feedback joystick used at several universities in teaching System Dynamics, a core mechanical engineering undergraduate course where students learn to model dynamic systems in several domains. A second goal of the haptic paddle is to increase the accessibility of robotics and haptics by providing a low-cost device for…

Creativity, invention, and innovation are values championed as central pillars of engineering education. However, university environments that foster open-ended design-build projects are uncommon. Fabrication and prototyping spaces at universities are typically "machine shops" where students relinquish actual fabrication activities to…

In 2004, a group of engineering and education faculty at Virginia Tech received a major curriculum reform and engineering education research grant under the department-level reform (DLR) program of the NSF. This DLR project laid the foundation of sponsored research in engineering education in the Department of Engineering Education. The DLR…

This paper describes the longitudinal impacts of a partnership between the University of Colorado Boulder's K-12 Engineering Education initiative and the St. Vrain Valley School District. Together, university and high school educators created a replicable pre-college engineering model in a nine-school feeder system, which serves many Colorado…

Industry has consistently identified lack of experience in manufacturing processes as one of the key competency gaps among new engineering graduates. This paper discusses a laboratory-based course that provides realistic hands-on manufacturing experiences to students. The course uses team-based projects that help students gain hands-on experience…

We analyze and study the beginning of a new Electrical Engineering Department, supported by an NSF Departmental Level Reform award, within a new College of Engineering in the 21st Century and also describe the academic approach and influences of an innovative cognitive-based approach to curriculum development. In addition, the approach taken…

Active learning enhances engineering education. This paper presents rationale, curriculum supplements, and an approach to active learning that may be seamlessly incorporated into a traditional lecture-based engineering class. A framework of educational theory that structures the active learning experiences and includes consideration of learning…