Use of the Arduino Platform in Fundamentals of Engineering

This Complete Evidence-based Practice paper outlines the benefits of incorporating Arduino activities into a first-year engineering class for students majoring in electrical engineering, bioengineering, undeclared engineering and mechanical engineering at Fairfield University. Arduino is an open-source hardware platform that has recently gained a wide following among students for its ease of utilization to build with it exciting interactive projects. Teaching first-year engineering classes is a challenge given the importance of these classes in providing a solid foundation in engineering education. The traditional highly demanding first-year engineering curriculum which focuses primarily on engineering thinking and problem solving with a limited content of basic skills is not inspiring to incoming students and can become overwhelming. For this reason, we will use the Arduino platform in this first-year engineering class to add more hands-on activities to the curriculum and bring the joy of achievement for students. Our goal is to add excitement to the Fundamentals of Engineering course by providing a hands-on and fun-to-learn environment designed to expose students to tools that will lead them to critical thinking, innovation, energy awareness, and problem-solving skills which will enable them to become part of a very competitive workforce in the future. Project-based courses attempt to resolve the tension between providing training in the fundamentals of engineering and problem solving by motivating and engaging students. Active learning in first year engineering courses is believed to improve retention and appeal to a diverse population of students [1]. We report on a two-year study using the Arduino platform to build a series of projects. We have used Arduino platform projects in two-course instances and present survey results describing student responses to learning with Arduino.