"Teams Teaching Engineering": A Flexible, Hands-on Project Promoting Maker Space Usage in Large Introductory Lecture Classes

Though experiential learning and hands-on “making” projects can encourage development of an entrepreneurial mindset and increase student engagement, such activities are often considered incompatible with larger lecture classes with over 50 students and no lab sections. This paper describes an open-ended project called “Teams Teaching Engineering” that can be scaled up or down in complexity and is adaptable to a wide range of classes. In its most simple form, it can be used as a large homework assignment, where student teams build a visual aid illustrating a class concept, use it to teach someone outside the team, then write about what they have learned from the process. This simple version was successfully implemented in four semesters of a statics class with over fifty students and in a one-credit Introduction to Aerospace Engineering class with over 125 first-year students. After positive feedback, the Introduction to Aerospace assignment was expanded into a more elaborate semester-long project that added makerspace visits and an essay where students reflected upon the opportunities these spaces might offer to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset. Student surveys captured attitudes about the project and the university making facilities, and indicated that a large majority of the students were more likely to use the making facilities in the future because of the semester project. Student reflective essays also indicated that the students believed that making spaces added enormous value to the university and supported cultivation of the entrepreneurial mindset, specifically promoting curiosity, making connections, and creating value. The “Teams Teaching Engineering” project may provide an experiential learning opportunity for classes that otherwise may not include a hands-on project while motivating incoming students to explore and use the university makerspaces and other fabrication facilities. When combined with a student surveys and a reflective essay assignment, it can also provide useful insights on how students perceive both the team project and the university’s makerspace ecosystem. Background and Motivation Engineering educators, industry partners, and other stakeholders believe that the next generation of engineers need more than just technical knowledgethey must have a diverse set of professional skills to function in a rapidly changing workplace. This view has been captured by several ASEE reports on Transforming Undergraduate Education in Engineering (TUUE) [1], [2], and in an Engineering Competency Model developed by the American Association of Engineering Societies and the US Department of Labor [3]. Many professional skills considered important in today’s rapidly changing environment are also considered important in entrepreneurship. An “Entrepreneurial Mindset” (EM) has been defined as a set of cognitive behaviors that focus on recognizing opportunities and creating value in any context, not just as part of a new business; and some have argued that cultivating EM in engineering undergraduates can benefit individuals, their employers, and the larger society [4]. Entrepreneurially Minded Learning (EML) is an emergent pedagogy that attempts to cultivate this mindset in engineering undergraduates by emphasizing discovery, opportunity identification and value creation through open-ended problems that tie to real-world applications [5]. In this paper, EM follows a framework used in the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), which emphasizes curiosity, connections and creating value [6]. Active learning and hands-on projects, which are emphasized in EML, have been shown to improve student performance and engagement [7] and some researchers have reported a positive impact on retention [8]. ASEE’s Phase II TUUE report indicates that engineering undergraduates believe that more open-ended problems and design projects are needed throughout the curriculum and should be available in extracurricular activities [2]. One tool that universities are turning to facilitate hands on projects is academic makerspaces, which may reduce barriers to the use of student projects in classes and provide more opportunities to include EML activities in the curriculum that include prototyping and fabrication of a physical product. The concept of the university maker space is a relatively new concept, but research and interest in academic makerspaces has grown in recent years [9], [10], [11]. Most students use academic makerspaces to work on personal projects, engage in organized cocurricular activities, or complete hands-on projects required by their curriculum. The spaces also provide the potential to provide a sense of community within the larger university campus and allow a forum for creative expression. Though many believe academic makerspaces have the potential to transform the educational experience [10], it can be difficult to implement class projects that involve fabrication, especially in core classes that have over 50 students and no lab sessions. Traditional faculty who do not teach engineering design may hesitate to ask students to fabricate a physical product because of their own lack of familiarity with makerspaces. Furthermore, even those motivated by the idea of entrepreneurially minded learning may see a large lecture-based class as inhospitable to any hands-on project. Furthermore, though academic makerspaces are freely available to students for extracurricular projects, not all students take advantage of them. Some students may already be experienced makerspace users; others may be eager to learn, but lack the confidence or initiative to seek out what makerspaces have to offer. For example, Florida Tech has four high quality academic "making" facilities and free training on how to use the equipment available to the campus community, but only a fraction of students take advantage of them. More class projects with EML themes early in the curriculum may encourage future makerspace usage for cocurricular activity, better senior design experiences and an overall increase in self-efficacy. The work reported here attempts to address these issues in an incremental fashion. The first section of the paper describes a simple team project that could be used by faculty as a first “small step” towards increasing the EML themes and active learning in an otherwise traditional class environment with over 50 students. What makes this useful as a curricular tool is the fact that the basic idea can be used in nearly any class and its modest scope allows faculty with no previous experience with EML or active learning to try it without a serious time investment. Subsequent sections of the paper describe an expanded semester-long version of the project and results from student surveys and feedback. One of the goals for the semester project is to increase student engagement in the makerspaces beyond what is required for class assignments. As described here the project was designed for engineering students in their first semester of college, but the project could be tailored for use later in the curriculum. By linking class projects to university makerspaces, both faculty and students can draw upon the experienced staff and training opportunities many makerspaces prove to the campus community. Small steps towards EML and active learning: the “Teams Teaching Engineering” Project The Teams Teaching Engineering project was first used in a statics class with over 50 students and was repeated for four semesters. In this early version (called “Teams Teaching Statics”) the scope was smaller and the project did not require students to interact with makerspaces or use CAD tools. In its most basic form, student teams created a visual aid of a statics concept and used it to teach someone outside the team. Students were allowed to pick their own teams (3-4 individuals), and the instructor would only engage if people were having difficulty finding someone to work with. The graded deliverable was a short report describing the statics concept they were teaching, the visual aid they created, the process of teaching someone using the visual aid, and what they learned from the experience. Students were required to include photos of the visual aid and the teaching process in their report, but did not have to turn in their physical product. Some students offered up their creations anyway, and several of the better ones were used as teaching tools for future classes. Grading was generousnear full credit was awarded for completion of all steps of the assignment, and extra credit was awarded for exceptional efforts. The project was not heavily weightedit was part of the homework grade, with double the weight of a typical assignment. Students with D or F class averages that could not find team partners were given an alternative assignment (e.g., copying example problems from the text). For some semesters, students were also required to complete a “statics photo safari” where they took pictures of objects on campus, then draw free body diagrams and identify support reactions. This simple version of the teaching project was created in 2016 by an inexperienced professor (the author) attempting to inject more active learning in an otherwise traditional lecture class. It was a first attempt to implement EML in the classroom after being exposed to the concept and no attempt was made to quantify the success of the project, but it appeared to meet the modest goals set for it. The open-ended nature of the assignment provided a welcome change from standard homework problems and students seemed energized by the project. From an instructor standpoint it was relatively straightforward to implement, and because the assignment was short, generously graded, and included student photos, grading the student reports was much more enjoyable than a typical assignment. Based on its success in the statics classroom, a similarly scoped project was added to the Aerospa