Engineering is becoming increasingly cross-disciplinary, requiring students to develop
skills in multiple engineering disciplines (e.g., mechanical engineering students having to learn
the basics of electronics, instrumentation, and coding) and interprofessional skills to integrate
perspectives from people outside their field. In the workplace, engineering teams are frequently
multidisciplinary, and often, people from outside of engineering are part of the team that brings a
product to market. Additionally, teams are often diverse in age, race, gender, and in other areas.
Teams that creatively utilize the contrasting perspectives and ideas arising from these differences
can positively affect team performance and generate solutions effective for a broader range of
users. These trends suggest that engineering education can benefit from having engineering
students work on team projects that involve a blend of cross-disciplinary and mixed-aged
collaborations. An NSF-funded project set out to explore this idea by partnering undergraduate
engineering students enrolled in a 300-level electromechanical systems course with preservice
teachers enrolled in a 400-level educational technology course to plan and deliver robotics
lessons to fifth graders at a local school. Working in small teams, students designed, built, and
coded bio-inspired robots. The collaborative activities included: (1) training with Hummingbird
Bit hardware (Birdbrain Technologies, Pittsburgh, PA) (e.g. sensors, servo motors) and coding
platform, (2) preparing robotics lessons for fifth graders that explained the engineering design
process, and (3) guiding the fifth graders in the design of their robots. Additionally, each
engineering student designed a robot following the theme developed with their education student
and fifth-grade partners.
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The Impact of a Multidisciplinary Service-Learning Project on Engineering Knowledge and Professional Skills in Engineering and Education Students.
A multidisciplinary service-learning project that involved teaching engineering to fourth and fifth graders was implemented in three sets of engineering and education classes to determine if there was an impact on engineering knowledge and teamwork skills in both the engineering and education students as well as persistence in the engineering students. Collaboration 1 paired a 100-level engineering Information Literacy class in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering with a 300-level Educational Foundation class. Collaboration 2 combined a 300-level Electromechanical Systems class in Mechanical Engineering with a 400-level Educational Technology class. Collaboration 3 paired a 300-level Fluid Mechanics class in Mechanical Engineering Technology with a 400-level Elementary Science Methods class. Collaborations 1 and 3 interacted with fourth or fifth graders by developing and delivering lessons to the elementary students. Students in collaboration 2 worked with fifth graders in an after-school technology club. While each collaboration had its unique elements, all collaborations included the engineering design process both in classroom instruction and during the service learning project. Quantitative data were collected from both engineering and education students in a pretest/posttest design. Teamwork skills were measured in engineering students using a validated teamwork skills assessment based on peer evaluation. Each class had a comparison class taught by the same instructor that included a team project, and the same quantitative measures. Engineering students who participated in collaboration 1 were evaluated for retention, which was defined as students who were still enrolled in the college of engineering and technology two semesters after completion of the course. Engineering students also completed an evaluation of academic and professional persistence. For the engineering students, none of the assessments involving technical skills had significant differences, although the design process knowledge tests trended upward in the treatment classes. The preservice teachers in the treatment group scored significantly higher in the design process knowledge test, and preservice teachers in collaborations 1 and 3 had higher scores in the engineering knowledge test than the comparison group. Teamwork skills in the treatment group were significantly higher than in the comparison group for both engineering and education students. Thus, engineering and education students in the treatment groups saw gains in teamwork skills, while education students saw more gains in engineering knowledge. Finally, all engineering students had significantly higher professional persistence.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1908743
- PAR ID:
- 10447504
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ASEE New England annual conference
- ISSN:
- 2470-928X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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