Transitioning An Experimental Fundamental Programming Course from Pilot to Regular Course: Effective Solutions to Unexpected Challenges

West Virginia University has a common first year engineering program. Two consecutive engineering fundamentals courses are taught, the second of which is a project based fundamental MATLAB programming course. The traditional course uses projects from a wide range of engineering disciplines in order to appeal to varied interests of students. However, all are computational, which was thought to leave kinesthetic learners underserved. A pilot course was developed in the summer of 2012 that used robotic projects instead of computational projects to teach programming fundamentals. This approach was quite successful, particularly with its target consort of kinesthetic learners, so the pilot was extended. It was taught the following summer, and in small sections during the 2013-2014 semesters. Much of this work is described in previous ASEE conference proceedings. After temporary funding expires, pilot projects too frequently fail to be continued. In this case, the success and popularity of the class made conversion to regular sessions attractive. The robotic version was started as a regular section of the course in the fall of 2014, and is to be continued into 2015. Transition from pilot to regular course is often challenging. For this course it required transferring cost responsibility from the university to students, changes made to the course offering, and technical alterations to the class. Unexpected issues arose such as lower than desired enrollment in the first semester and higher than expected student costs. The long term efficacy of the course is explored through examining how students who took the course during its pilot phase fared in later courses that build upon its learning outcomes. Additionally, transition issues from pilot to regular course and solutions to implementation difficulties are described. Future work toward continuous improvement is also considered. This work extends and expands upon previously published conference proceedings by following students after pilot courses, and by describing the process, challenges, and efficacy of solutions in transitioning from pilot to regular course. Introduction and Background West Virginia University (WVU) uses a common first year engineering curriculum, including two consecutive introductory courses in engineering problem solving, This has become common first year engineering curricula in many institutions. Of interest in this work is the second course, which is taught as a project based course in using fundamental MATLAB programming as a tool in engineering problem solving. The course usually requires that students complete three projects per semester, generally requiring software input and output, but no building or construction of any kind. Hands on learning is well documented as an effective teaching tool for kinesthetic learners. Such students seemed to be underserved by the conventional teaching methods of the course, so efforts were undertaken to create more hands-on and real world application projects. 7 Implementation of project based courses can be challenging, but many universities have created successful hands-on project based courses. Penn State has been using robots of its own design since the mid-1990’s. They have had success with a group size of three students per group. Northeastern University uses semi-custom kits to teach programming and electronics with a high P ge 26603.3 level of positive student feedback. Both Louisiana Tech University and Portland State University have used C programming to control Arduino controllers in projects. Louisiana State University uses project based freshman courses that include programmable controllers and small robots. 2 Louisiana Tech University and Portland State University implemented the use of Arduino controllers for teaching of C programming, with mixed results. Student feedback about the project based approach was positive, but due to the lack of a textbook, they found that they were frustrated in learning Arduino programming. 9 Inexpensive robot platforms have been commercially available for several years. The OWI arm kit is a 5-axis arm that retails for about $50. Researchers in Thailand programmed an inverse kinematic joint controller to interface with an OWI arm using MATLAB as the software. A pilot course was developed in the summer of 2012 under a short term grant that used robotic projects instead of computational projects to teach programming fundamentals at WVU. The approach was quite successful, particularly with its target cohort of kinesthetic learners, so the pilot was extended. It was taught the following summer, and in small sections during the 20132014 school year. One of the classes used the Arduino controllers from the pilot course, without the robots, as a hands-on project to create a security system. 11 Students who took the robotic version of the course appreciated the hands on aspects, and it appeared as though those students may have learned more than they would have using a more conventional approach. Some anecdotally reported that it helped with later courses, in particular a mechatronics course that uses the same Arduino controllers. 11 After temporary funding expires, pilot projects such as this often come to an end, but the success and popularity of this project made conversion to regular class sessions attractive, however several problems had to be overcome. These included material costs, how to fit such a class into the other course offerings, how to change projects from 6-week team based to 15 week individual ones, and how to overcome an unexpectedly low initial enrollment.