Examining skill retention from a redesigned laboratory course to capstone design sequence

Abstract

At Northeastern University, Measurements and Analysis is a laboratory course typically taken during the junior year. This course is the only place in the curriculum where topics such as design of experiments, measurement of engineering quantities, data analysis and selection of sensors are covered. Beginning in Fall 2011 this course underwent an extensive redesign to move from demonstration lab experiments to hands on, open ended laboratory experiences which emphasized the students' ability to design experiments, identify the variables to be measured, and select the best instrumentation for a given task. Previous research by one of the authors demonstrated measureable gains in retention of course concepts and the application of those concepts during a 'design your own measurement experiment' term project. The purpose of the current study is to determine whether these skills have been carried over into the two semester capstone design course. If the earlier course is effective in teaching experimental design and laboratory techniques, this should translate to more sophisticated experimental design and execution in the capstone design course. To determine whether these concepts have been retained in the capstone design course, design reports were examined to note the instances of specific Measurements and Analysis topics in the design projects. Reports were examined for student populations that had taken the revised course and were compared to reports for students who had taken the original course with two different instructors. Both the number of topics addressed and the number of instances of each topic was noted. Preliminary results indicate that the groups that took the revised lab course were considering more topics from that course at a much earlier point in their capstone design project. Prior to the change in the Measurements course, the design teams did not consider design of experiments topics until relatively late in their design process, if at all, and the experiments were primarily functionality prototype testing. After the change in the laboratory course, a larger number of groups were using more topics even at the end of the first of the two capstone design semesters. Twenty-two distinct concepts were observed in this investigation. The two cohorts of students who took the original course with instructor A used (11/22) and (12/22) distinct measurements and analysis concepts in their projects, respectively. In contrast, the first cohort to experience the new course and instructor B prior to capstone used (20/22) distinct measurements and analysis concepts in their projects. In addition, 47% of the teams taking the new course had prototypes that had been experimentally tested by the end of Capstone 2, versus 6-14% in the previous terms. This investigation provides evidence that hands-on, open ended experiments provide a teaching methodology which improves student retention of proper experimental design techniques. BackgroundEngineering design requires a complex series of skills on the part of the stude...