Instructional Laboratory

One way to make students feel more welcome in a class is to learn their names.  In large classes or classes that meet infrequently, it can be difficult to learn names.  Some laboratory settings can make that more difficult because you generally approach students from the side or behind making it harder to recognize physical traits that may help an instructor recall their name.  

As part of my Engineering Unleashed Fellowship project, the student team suggested using name tags in the laboratory to help students and staff learn names. We explored many different name tag designs, including traditional paper tents and magnets.  Since the shelves above the bench surface are metal, we opted for name tags that were magnetic on one side and had a whiteboard on the other side.  This makes them reusable and easy to swap between sections.  The lockers that students store their equipment in during the semester are also metal.  Therefore, they can store their name tags on the front of their locker between sections, so they double as locker labels as well.  These name tags can be found at your favorite office supply or big retailer for a reasonable price.  We found a set with 96 2"x 4" name tags that we plan to start using in the spring 2024 semester, see photo above.

Across higher education, there has been an increased emphasis on creating inclusive classroom experiences for students. However, these efforts have largely been focused on traditional lecture-based courses.  While some of the evidence-based practices of these initiatives apply to lab and design-based courses, there are several unique situations in these courses that would benefit from a different approach.  For example, lab-based courses generally have longer in-class periods that require extended focus; use unique tools, equipment and software; and are required to complete activities that are very different from traditional homework.  In design or project-based classes, much of the project work happens in unstructured time outside of the classroom where team dynamics cannot be observed by instructional staff.  In both lab and design-based courses, students interact with their peers and instructional staff in very different ways.  Broadly experiential learning (labs and projects) is an essential part of STEM education, therefore, if we aim to have a diverse group of students succeed in STEM, then we also need for them to be included and active participants in all aspects of their education.

After converting all of the lab experiments in a Biomedical Instrumentation Laboratory (BIOE415) to a kit with an online option, I shared my process for ensuring that students still achieved the important learning objectives.  This paper was presented at the 2021 IEEE Frontiers in Education conference.  The full paper is available on IEEEXplore.

Last spring, UIUC announced that we were moving from Compass2g (Blackboard) to Canvas this academic year.  So, I've been exploring Canvas over the summer and decided to jump in and move my course to Canvas this fall.  My plan is to share tips about developing courses in Canvas along the way.

Since I have to manually move my content, my goals for this semester are to have a paperless lab and the content is also accessible for all students in my lab.  For the latter, I am going to draw from the UDL guidelines and the IT Accessibility 101 course provided by the Division of Disability Resources and Educational Services at Illinois. 

My first course in Canvas will be BIOE415: Biomedical Instrumentation Lab.  I'm organizing each lab into a module with background information and the experiment instructions.  Therefore a lot of my content is getting transferred to pages that are just webpages and you can edit the HTML if you know what you are doing.

My first tip is about how to add figure captions to images on pages in Canvas.  It is easy if you know HTML, but not if you are trying to search for how to do it on Canvas pages.

The final results of my dissertation research about affordable and portable laboratory kits were published in Advances in Engineering Education in 2019. The full paper can be accessed from the AEE website.

At the 2018 Dynamic Systems and Controls (DSCC) Conference, I published a paper detailing the methods for validating various DC Motor models.  The full paper can be accessed from the ASME Digital Collection.

At the 2017 Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference, I published the results of a comparison of lab kits using the control systems laboratory framework (CSLF) that I published earlier this year in the IEEE Transactions on Education. The paper also includes a suggested process for using the CSLF in new laboratory development (see photo above).  The full paper can be accessed in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

At the 2017 Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference, I published a paper about teaching assistants (TAs). The observations about the influence of TAs in the laboratory emerged from the laboratory equipment study that I conducted during my dissertation. Based on student comments during the original study, the TAs had an impact on the learning environment in the laboratory.   The full paper can be accessed in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

During my dissertation, I surveyed control systems faculty, laboratory staff, and industry professionals to determine common aspects of undergraduate control systems instructional laboratories. Through two different survey techniques, I defined the most common learning objectives, concepts, and components of a laboratory apparatus. The results of this study were recently published in IEEE Transactions on Education. The full paper can be downloaded from IEEE Explore.

The technical details of my laboratory kit for control systems were published in the Raspberry Pi special edition of Electronics.  This article also includes the newly added Furuta Inverted Pendulum attachment for the kit.  The open access paper can be found on the Electronics website.

I created a video demonstration of my control systems laboratory kit to help expand the reach of the new possibilities of instructional laboratories with low-cost hardware.

At the 2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education conference, I presented the preliminary analysis of the quantitative data we collected about a laboratory kit during the 2014-2015 school year.  During both semesters, half of the GE 320 laboratory sections used our new kit (treatment) and the other half used the existing equipment (baseline).  In this preliminary analysis, we determined that we could not detect a difference in performance on exams between the treatment and baseline groups.  The full paper can be found on the IEEE Explore website.

At the 2015 American Control Conference (ACC), I presented a paper in the invited session on Controls Education.  In this paper, I included the technical details and code developed for the GE 320 laboratory kit.  The technical details include a bill of materials and circuit board diagrams.  The code includes s-function code and Simulink models used in the laboratories. The models used to 3D print other parts are available upon request. The full paper can be found on the IEEE Explore website.

A bring your own experiment (BYOE) is a special category of papers at the ASEE Annual Conference in the Division Experimentation and Lab-Oriented Studies.  In a BYOE paper the author describes how to develop equipment and/or a novel set of experiments.  At the 2015 ASEE Annual Conference, I published a BYOE paper about the GE 320 laboratory kit I developed and the experiments that can be performed with the kit.  During the conference, instead of a traditional paper presentation, I demonstrated an experiment with the kit in a science fair style session.  The full paper can be found on the ASEE PEER website.  

We are seeking volunteers who have experience teaching and/or developing control systems laboratories. The purpose of this study is to determine a consensus of the most important learning outcomes, concepts, and equipment for students to experience in a control systems laboratory. In order to achieve a consensus the survey will be administered in four rounds between June and August 2015. Each round will take approximately 20-30 minutes to complete.

On October 23, I presented the first paper my advisor, Dr. R.S. Sreenivas, and I published on my research of affordable and portable laboratory kits for undergraduate controls education courses.  The paper and presentation were part of the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference in San Antonio, Texas.  The slides from the presentation are included below and the full paper is available in the ASME Digital Collection.