Andrew Jackson

The COVID-19 global health crisis has forced educators to rapidly shift to online instruction methods. While this effort is already difficult, it is particularly challenging for courses with hands-on laboratory instruction, as in the case for many STEM courses. To offer the effective education in-person instruction affords, it is important to maintain the same educational and curricular value of laboratories while taking advantage of benefits that online education and online experimentation tools offer. This project will leverage the development and deployment of online labs and integrated online instruction modules to investigate the impact of using an exclusively online instructional mode for a fundamental electrical and computer engineering laboratory course. To reach this goal, the project will answer the following three research questions: A) How do faculty experience a top-down mandated, time-constrained, and rapid transition to exclusively online-based laboratory modules in engineering courses along the continuum of resistance towards the wholesale embrace of educational technologies? B) How does exclusively online laboratory instruction and online experimentation impact students? learning experiences in terms of engagement, investigated through self-regulation and motivation? C) What user experience factors influence the success of introducing exclusively online experimentation activities into engineering courses and curricula?

The Learning by Evaluating (LbE) project will develop, refine, and test an educational innovation in which 9th grade students evaluate sample work as a starting point in engineering design cycles. Students will compare and discuss the quality and fit to context of completed design artifacts. Teachers will collaboratively review and refine the LbE approaches and map the LbE materials into the curriculum. Prior work suggests this will allow students to improve understanding of the content, context, and ways of thinking for an assigned project; identify strengths and weaknesses of existing approaches; and recognize key features related to work quality before working on an assignment. The project will work directly with DeKalb County School District in Atlanta, Georgia, and connect to an internationally implemented 9th grade course offered through the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association STEM Center. The pedagogical strategies emerging from this project could be embedded in other STEM Center courses offered in K-12 classrooms internationally, or incorporated by individual teachers in a variety of disciplines through the dissemination of freely available instructional resources.