HACKING EDUCATION; PROJECT-BASED learning TRUMPS THE IVORY TOWER

August 20, 2022 oncerkbr 0 Comments

Project-based learning, hackathons, and final projects for college courses are fulfilling a demand for hands-on technical learning that had previously fallen by the wayside during the internet/multi-media computer euphoria of the late 90’s. By getting back to building actual hardware yourself, Hackers are influencing the direction of education. In this post we will review some of this progress and seek your input for where we go next.

Hackathons to solve the world’s problems

Hackathons are now being run to solve many of the world’s problems. recent examples include MIT Media lab ‘make the breast pump not suck,’ and Yale’s ‘hacking heath’. Both of these hackathons were one-weekend sprints with the goal of developing rapid proof-of-concept prototype solutions.

In the case of Yale’s hackathon, the outcome was a 5 minute pitch for a new startup company. According to Hacking Health’s organizer, [Chris Loose], “the event generated extraordinary energy and a number of impressive product concepts. many of the teams continue to drive their ideas ahead and are pursuing grant funding…”

Hacking health @ Yale.
Recently, [Tony Kim] ran MIT’s 6.002 Circuits and electronics course as an EdX program in Mongolia. After learning the background theory students built many of the analog and digital circuits labs, created their own circuits and systems, and even built a coffee can radar which I’ve been told was on Mongolian national Television. one of the students from this effort became known as the boy genius of Ulan Bator.

Project-based learning

Project based learning is making a come back. Whether it is requiring a final project or basing a course entirely around a project.

Senior design or capstone courses have carried the torch on project-based learning for decades, in this every EE student (or ME or physics, or etc) completes a working prototype by the end of the semester. These courses are usually the very last thing you would take in your undergraduate program.

Electromagnetics was made more interesting by the MIT Coffee can radar course that I created with my fellow MIT Lincoln laboratory colleagues. This course continues to be extremely popular, with numerous spin-offs and professional education (open enrollment to anyone) variants also including build a phased array and a search and track radar. This course has been used at Northrup Grumman Inc., internal to MITRE corp, MIT Lincoln Labs, and many others. It has also been used as a capstone project at numerous EE programs across the world. UC Davis has created a full semester course based on this work. For those more interested in radar experimentation than building the radar itself, a fully assembled kit is now being offered. This was the top-ranked MIT professional education course in 2011, demonstrating the demand for project-based learning in electromagnetics and radar.

The ubiquitous coffee can radar is making the subject of Electromagnetics interesting to a new generation.

Michigan state University’s undergraduate antennas course ECE405 offers a final project where students design then build antennas for an end-of-semester design challenge ranging from a fox hunt (.PPT warning) hidden transmitter, communicating with an amateur satellite, to maximizing the distance on a wi-fi link (.PPT warning).

Recently, the final project has been to develop a full communications system, including a phased array transmitter and an envelope detector receiver, where the group achieving the greatest power transfer across the communications link wins. This project is broken up into four phases:

Characterize the microwave substrate using a transmission line resonator printed on the substrate,

Design an envelope detector circuit

Design a single patch antenna

Design an antenna array

ECE405 is a project based antennas course, where a microwave communications link is constructed using a phased array of antennas.

According to [Prof. Prem Chahal], “the projects make the lecture material much more interesting and the students are able to realize the importance of the material being covered.” Project-based learning can be more work for the prof, but not in this case according to [Prof. Chahal], “the instructor time is recovered during lecture hours (because) the lecture material becomes much more interesting and simpler to explain, and students actively participate during the lecture hour.”

student groups in ECE405 each build their own microwave communications link, where the link with the best power transfer wins.

Similarly, Harvard’s introduction to Electrical engineering ES 50 is providing an exciting experience for all involved where small groups of students make anything from a tri-corder to a Rubic’s cub solver as the final project.

Dette er blot begyndelsen. I den nærmeste fremtidHACKING EDUCATION; PROJECT-BASED learning TRUMPS THE IVORY TOWER (###) Project-based learning, hackathons, and final projects for college courses are fulfilling a demand for hands-on technical learning that had previously fallen by the wayside during the internet/multi-media computer euphoria of the late 90’s. By getting back to building actual hardware yourself, Hackers are influencing the direction of education. In this post we will review some of this progress and seek your input for where we go next.