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Learning critical concepts that are centered on the analysis, design, and maintenance of transportation infrastructure systems poses a measure of difficulty for undergraduates in engineering. Therefore, hands-on learning pedagogy should be an excellent precursor to increase understanding of these concepts, since the pedagogy incorporates real-life experience in the delivery. This paper describes how a hands-on learning pedagogy called experiment-centric pedagogy (ECP) has been used to teach these concepts to undergraduate students at a historically Black university. The research questions are as follows: (1) How well can ECP improve students’ understanding of concepts essential to the analysis and design of transportation infrastructure systems? (2) How has the ECP facilitated the achievement of the learning objectives of these concepts? and (3) Does an ECP increase the engagement of undergraduate students in their transportation infrastructure engineering learning and lead to measurable lasting gains? To answer these research questions, ECP was implemented and assessed when used to teach the concepts of stress and strain utilized in the analysis of bridges and other transportation infrastructure, sound used in the development and design of noise barriers, moisture content in controlling compaction of highway infrastructure systems, and degradation of infrastructure systems exposed to various environmental settings. Assessment results from 92 undergraduates reveal an increase in students’ motivation and cognitive understanding of the relevant concepts, as well as learning gains and an improved success rate compared to the traditional method of teaching. 

The hands-on approach in teaching and learning is an important resource to be explored because it offers a meaningful platform for student-instructor interaction that fosters sound scientific reasoning and improves the understanding of abstract chemistry concepts. Experiment-centric pedagogy (ECP) is a contemporary teaching approach that integrates active student participation in problem-based activities through hands-on mobile devices. This paper describes how experiment-centric pedagogy (ECP) has been used to teach key chemistry concepts to undergraduate students in the chemistry discipline at Historically Black University (HBCU). To assess whether ECP achieves a lasting increase in undergraduate student curiosity and engagement in the chemistry discipline, ECP was implemented from Fall 2021 to Fall 2022 using an inexpensive, safe, and portable electronic instrumentation system usable in both classrooms and laboratories. The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire developed by Pintrich, Smith, García, and McKeachie in 1991 was used to measure the key constructs associated with students’ curiosity and engagement. The classroom observation protocol (COPUS) was used to assess instructors’ effectiveness, and signature assignments were used to evaluate knowledge gains. 

The experiment-centric pedagogy (ECP) teaching approach is a less cumbersome way of introducing core and fundamental topics in STEM through relevant practical and hands-on sessions that are carefully incorporated into lectures. The philosophy of ECP is that students learn better by doing. Hence, it promotes the practical implementation of fundamental theories in STEM fields by using inexpensive basic elements to develop portable but extremely effective units for use by these students. The portability of these units enables these students to conduct these experiments in the comfort of their homes, while their low cost makes it highly affordable. With carefully curated experiments across different departments such as Electrical, Civil, Physics, and Computer Science, ECP has been able to develop informative experiments to calculate impedance and transient current in RLC circuits buttressing the concept of ohm’s law in electrical engineering and physics, combinational and sequential circuits such as adders, multiplexer, subtractors, decoders, counters, and shift-registers in computer Science. ECP also implemented data acquisition systems alongside experiments to demonstrate Hooke’s law with respect to stress/strain on a flat metal bar and measurement of the pressure of a thin-walled cylindrical vessel in civil engineering. These experiments help students develop a good understanding of these concepts, which are the building blocks of their respective fields. Early results of ECP have shown that there has been a significant improvement in students' interest in these STEM courses. 

Motivation is a strong factor in effective learning, and it has an impact on learning outcomes. Students' motivation can make or break their ability to grasp abstract courses which predominate courses taught in Civil Engineering. Students that are more motivated to study, stick with it longer, and put in more effort to perform better in class, hands-on experiments, and standardized tests. This study is designed to answer the following questions: (i) Is there a significant difference between the motivation of Civil Engineering undergraduates pre and post implementation of experiment-centric pedagogy? (ii) Is there a significant difference between Civil Engineering undergraduates’ motivation pre and post implementation of experiment-centric pedagogy based on gender? and (iii) Is there any significant association between socio-demographic characteristics of Civil Engineering undergraduates and their motivation? Motivation constructs considered in the present study include intrinsic goal orientation, task value, expectancy component, test anxiety, critical thinking, and metacognition. Undergraduates’ responses shall be collected using 7-point Likert-scales, and statistical analyses done using Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS 25.0) at a statistical significance set at 0.05. 

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, conducting lab classes emerged as a major challenge. Just switching to remote only mode with virtual experiments and simulations was very limiting for both the instructors and the students. At an historically black university, an approach that integrated the hands-on experiments enriched by simulation resources with virtual follow up was adopted. The key advantages of this approach were access to equipment, flexibility on when and how experiments are conducted, and the curiosity driven engagement fostered. Though this approach lacks the in-person one-on-one engagement and use of specialized equipment in the lab, it established a different and, in some aspect, deeper student engagement. Development of troubleshooting skills and the confidence in setting experiments are a few key observations. In this study, we present a comparison of the efficacy of such remote integrated modes of conducting Physics experiments with in-person in laboratory teaching of undergraduate students, who are enrolled in the Introduction to Physics Experiment course participated at Morgan State University. We conclude that these two approaches are complementary to one another. 

A cost-effective, secure, and portable electronic instrumentation equipment is used in Experiment Centric Pedagogy (ECP), formerly known as Mobile Hands-On Studio Technology and Pedagogy, as a teaching method for STEM subjects both inside and outside of the classroom. Since the Spring of 2020, ECP has been integrated into two Industrial Engineering (IE) courses: Thermodynamics and Materials Engineering. This has been done in various ways, including through student use at home and in-class demonstrations and teaching labs. During the most recent academic session (Fall 2021–Spring 2022), the effects of practical home-based experimentation and lab activities on students' attitudes, interests, and performance were examined for the Engineering Thermodynamics course. The outcomes of a survey known as the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaires (MLSQ), which was given to 51 students, demonstrated better improvements in the student's motivation, epistemic, and perceptual curiosity, three crucial characteristics linked to their success. Along with the MLSQ, the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate Students (COPUS) assesses active learning in Industrial Engineering courses, and quantitative and qualitative data on the significant components of student achievement were gathered. Results obtained show that using ECP has improved students' awareness of material properties and increased their interest in learning about the thermodynamics concept of heat transfer in connection to various solid materials. 

One of the key knowledge areas in Computer Science (CS) is Digital Logic and Computer Architecture where the learning outcome is an understanding of Boolean algebra, logic gates, registers, or arithmetic logic units, etc. and explaining how software and hardware are related to a computing system. Experimental Centric based Instructional Pedagogy (ECP) with portable laboratory instrumentation might provide real hands-on experience to obtain a practical understanding of those concepts at a lower cost compared with virtual hands-on laboratories that lack direct interaction with real apparatus or no integration of labs in the course. This work presents the initial adaptation of ECP to introduce the fundamentals of digital logic concepts in a Computer Architecture course in Spring 2022 for the first time in a CS department at a university teaching such courses without a lab and serving predominantly minority students. To establish a conducive and dynamic classroom environment by discovering course content through exploration, students majoring in CS were introduced to several logic gate types, worked with breadboards to connect circuits, and carried out operations to produce the necessary output using the commercial ADALM 1K Active Learning Module. To evaluate the impact of the ECP on students; performance in the class, three different evaluation methods were used, such as classroom observation, a signature assignment, and a Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) survey. The Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS) findings indicated greater student engagement when ECP is used; the Signature assignment results indicated improved learning outcomes for students; and the MLSQ survey, which measures students; motivation, critical thinking, curiosity, collaboration, and metacognition, determined a positive impact of the ECP on the CS participants. 

Real-life hands-on pedagogy adequately grounded in workable social learning theory is a precursor to motivating students to grasp transportation-related concepts. At a historically black university, an evidence-based, experiment-focused, hands-on method of instruction was adopted in the transportation discipline from the fall of 2020 until now. This paper outlines the development and implementation of hands-on pedagogy in the transportation systems discipline from fall 2020 to fall 2022. The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) developed by Pintrich, Smith, García, and McKeachie in 1991 was used to measure key constructs associated with students' success, such as motivation, epistemic and perceptual curiosity, and self-efficacy. Signature assignments were developed to measure student success outcomes from adopting the pedagogy. The results of the MSLQ administered to 44 students impacted by the pedagogy reveal a significant increase in the students' key constructs associated with success. The pedagogy reveals better knowledge gain and classroom engagement than the traditional teaching approach. 

The Adapting an Experiment-Centric Teaching Approach to Increase Student Achievement in Multiple STEM Disciplines is a sponsored experiment-focused hands-on teaching pedagogy developed to promote motivation and academic achievement across seven STEM disciplines. The program is a large educational program with multi-Department STEM projects comprising approximately 200 tasks and 40 personnel. To facilitate the successful implementation of this STEM program, an efficient project management tool called Smartsheet was adopted to manage all the tasks to be carried out and the activities involved. Smartsheet software has helped facilitate efficient project coordination, scheduling deliverables, communicating with and assigning tasks to project team members, monitoring performance, and evaluation. The Smartsheet is a project management tool developed for coordinating and monitoring project activities, promoting productive guidance, efficient communication, appropriate supervision of the project team, optimization of the necessary allocated inputs, and their application to meeting the program’s objectives. The paper describes the effectiveness of the team as we utilized project management tools in managing this large group of STEM projects over the past three years. Additionally, the paper elaborates on the social management theoretical framework on which the project management principles are hinged. The impactful outcomes of the STEM program in increasing academic performance as well as improving key constructs associated with student success such as motivation, epistemic and perceptual curiosity, engineering identity, and selfefficacy through the team effectiveness metrics and the results of the Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis presented in the paper revealed an efficient management strategy anchored on the social management theoretical framework and facilitated by the project management tool. 

The field of calculus is critical to the success and advancement of many Engineering and statistical systems. Calculus provides ways of analyzing transient quantities including data collected from sensors, determining area under a curve, fitting a line for predictive analytics, and price changes in the stock market. It is also core to the understanding of numerous probability distributions in statistics hence, a fundamental knowledge of this concept is crucial for a successful career in STEM. The project would abstract the complexities involved in the learning of calculus from students by providing simple yet relevant experiments that would boost the students interest in this field. The concepts of differentiation and integration would be practically demonstrated to students through affordable and portable circuits. The project would employ readily available circuit elements like inductors, capacitors, and Op Amps to demonstrate integration and differentiation to the students. By employing cheap components and portable circuits, students can afford and carry out these experiments in the classroom and at the comfort of their homes. These experiments will also enable the students appreciate the relevance of these concepts in the field of Engineering, Mathematics and other STEM fields.