Transforming a Freshman Electrical Engineering Lab Course to Improve Access to Place-Bound Students

This paper discusses the transformation of an introductory electrical engineering lab course into an interactive hybrid teaching model, a combination of face-to-face and online instruction, to expand access to Electrical and Computer Engineering to place-bound students. The modified course will include inter-campus collaborative hands-on laboratory and team project experiences. This has the potential to transform the educational experience of the often isolated place-bound students in rural communities, building their social capital and connecting them to a larger learning community. The project addresses the needs of three very different populations of students: (i) traditional engineering students enrolled at the main engineering campus; (ii) students enrolled in a pre-engineering program at a separate campus; and (iii) place-bound students attending a minority serving community campus with no engineering curriculum. Delivery of an exemplary, financially responsible, engineering education in each of these communities has unique challenges, including cost and availability of an instructor, cost and availability of laboratory facilities, diversity of students’ prior knowledge and cultural experiences, and variety of students’ learning styles. In this formative year of the project we will assess (i) student content learning gains, (ii) the impact of the collaborative model on the development of social capital, and (iii) student perceptions of and engagement with the hybrid format in a freshman engineering lab course.