Designing a Sustainable Large-scale Project-based Learning (PBL) Experience for Juniors in Electrical and Computer Engineering

This paper presents a large-scale Project-Based Learning (PBL) curriculum that can handle 200 students per year without requiring an undue commitment of faculty or teaching-assistant time. The following strategies were used to attain the student benefits of the PBL curriculum while accommodating a large number of students and while keeping the faculty and teaching-assistant commitments to reasonable levels. (1) A top-level hardware/software specification of the system (laser-tag) is provided to the students. (2) Students must test their software and hardware using both their own methods and with provided test software and hardware fixtures. (3) How-to and demonstration videos are provided via a dedicated youTube channel. (4) Students implement the system by completing a series of scheduled milestones. (5) The same PBL project is completed every year. This large scale PBL curriculum is conducted during the junior year and has been in place for several years in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.