A generation ago, the first real exposure that engineering
students would get to sophisticated engineering tools and processes occurred
only after they entered university. Back then, complex, affordable engineering
equipment was not widely available to young techies.
That’s not true anymore. Today, high school students have access
to all kinds of advanced technology – everything from embedded systems and
tablets, mobile devices, small scale robotics systems, even UAVs. They’re all
part of the fabric of teenagers’ everyday lives.
What
Students Expect… and What They Get
Once they enter a university engineering program, these high
school students are expecting, at the very least, to continue doing hands-on
work with high tech tools and systems that run the gamut from unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAV) and solar power to advanced space systems and robotics.
Unfortunately, for too many students, this is where the process of
disillusionment begins. Their engineering courses in first and second year have
them doing math, learning theory and engaging in rigorous, low level foundational
engineering. This is absolutely necessary, but, typically, students don’t quite
understand that. Their appetite has been whetted for tangible, hands-on
projects involving robotics, unmanned vehicles and the like. Being restricted
to textbooks and mathematical theories fails to excite them.
A New Kind
of Engineering Lab
Today the question for engineering educators is how do we motivate
and retain our students while still ensuring that they have the rigorous
theoretical background they need? Our answer has been to create a new kind of
engineering lab. This lab is based on modular, purpose-built educational
hardware and software that recognizes the needs and skills of a new generation
of engineering students who grew up entirely in the computer era. To better
understand them, we considered where they fit within the entire history of
engineering education.
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| See what the Undergraduate Lab of the Future can look like in practice. |
An Exciting
Future Builds on the Past
In its infancy, engineering education was very closely related to
industry and hands-on application of specific skills. Studying engineering
amounted to doing an apprenticeship. This was the beginning of an extended
mechanical era, when students studied how to make things with their hands, how
to build roads, bridges, locomotives and other tangible industrial
applications. In other words, what they learned in the engineering classroom
was closely tied to the real world and the real world technologies of the time.
In the early to middle 20th century technology and our engineering
projects became more complex. We entered a theoretical era that required heavy reliance
on mathematics. With the dawn of the computer age, the pendulum swung again and
engineering’s educational emphasis returned to the more practical skills that
were in demand in industry. However, despite the increasing wealth of
experience that was available to students at that time, dynamic modeling and controlsystem curriculum remained firmly entrenched in a math-centered, simulated context.
Presenting
the Undergraduate Lab of the Future
As
we see it, the Undergraduate Lab of the Future has already arrived. It is the
expression, in the classroom and university lab, of this latest pendulum swing.
It is a hands-on, applications-based lab that delivers a learning experience
that is theoretically rigorous, yet practical, effective and highly motivating.
It touches all the bases and creates engineers that will be well-suited to find
the engineering solutions suited for the 21st century.
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