There is a worldwide trend to include engineering design in high school curricula as a bridge course to higher-level STEM education and to increase high school students' interest in STEM fields. This study used a battlebot design curriculum to compare engineering design learning between high school and college first-year students and then proposed…

The dynamic society we live in requires constant adaptation and innovation on every aspect of our daily lives, allowing us to improve the necessities of different people by doing it. For this study, we used a new approach with project-based learning to go beyond the typical environment in higher education and bring solutions to real-life…

Contribution: Prior studies have shown that project-based learning (PBL) is an effective approach on engineering education. This study further identifies the impact of a design thinking (DT) integrated PBL approach on the college students' learning motivation and creativity. Background: A well-developed robot and its project often require…

The damped harmonic oscillator physics problem is a standard oscillation problem in calculus physics for pre-engineering students in a community college. The use of alternative linear algebra eigenvalue stability method is consistent with the upper engineering courses using control theory. The external force and friction damping would become the…

Contribution: A first-year programming course was redesigned with a large, open-ended robotics project. The course design aligns with best practices for promoting development of students' self-efficacy in solving ill-structured software design problems. Background: From Jonassen's theory, problem-solving outcomes are dependent on the problem…

This study examined the educational effects in strengthening programming skills among university's undergraduate engineering students via integration of a robotics project and an experiential learning approach. In this study, a robotics project was conducted to close the gap of students' difficulty in relating the theoretical concepts of…

This paper presents the project Hydrobots, which the Eugenides Foundation has run in Greek secondary education schools since 2012. It is based on the MIT's Sea Perch project and more than 300 student teams got involved and built successfully an underwater remotely operated vehicle. The formal Greek education system lacks large-scale STEM-related…

Recent changes have been made in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education in the United States with the goal of increasing the number of students pursuing degrees and careers in STEM. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) integrate new science and engineering standards in an attempt to achieve this goal and are the…

It has often been found that students appreciate hands-on work, and find that they learn more with courses that include a project than those relying solely on conventional lectures and tests. This type of project driven learning is a key component of "Inquiry-based learning" (IBL), which aims at teaching methodology as well as content by…

Consumer electronics are creating huge job markets for graduates with the programming back-ground, and more and more computer science departments are launching embedded software subjects to meet this demand. However, most students majoring computer science do not have the background in electronics, or even circuits. Due to this reason, how to…

This paper describes the design of an industrial informatics course, following the project-based learning methodology, and reports the experience of four academic years (from 2012-13 to 2015-16). Industrial Informatics is a compulsory course taught in the third year of the B.Sc. degree in industrial electronics and automation engineering at the…

There is a growing demand in the US for more trained engineers, yet attrition rates from university engineering programs are high and diversity in engineering is low. Few resources have been dedicated to the improvement of freshman engineering courses even though freshman students have the highest rates of attrition. Through a synthesis of the…

This work describes the educational experiences gained teaching the Senior Design I & II courses, a senior level, two-semester sequence in the Electrical Engineering (EE) program at Georgia Southern University (GSU). In particular, the authors present their experiences in using robotics as the main area to develop the capstone senior design,…

Sensors of all kinds play significant roles in the way that we use and interact with technological devices today. Smartphones, household appliances, automobiles, and other products that we use every day incorporate many different kinds of sensors. While the sensors are hidden from view in the products, appliances, and tools that we use, they…

The acquisition of both transversal and specific competences cannot be achieved using conventional methodologies. New methodologies must be applied that promote the necessary competences for proper professional development. Interdisciplinary projects can be a suitable tool for competence-based learning. A priori, this might be complicated, as…