EMPOWERING NON-ENGINEERS WITH A ‘MICROCONTROLLERS FOR EVERYONE’ PHILOSOPHY

Over the past few years, the “Maker” or “Do It Yourself” movement has produced microcontrollers such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi that provide robust capabilities for sensing, control and communication. These tools are useful for both teaching and research in fields outside of ECE, but require the traditional understanding of basic electrical circuits and programming methodology in order to be effective. This dilemma led to development of a course for non-engineers to allow such technologies to be used effectively. Students participated from a diverse array of fields, including agriculture, animal science, biology, finance, fine arts, physics and statistics. The pedagogical approach used was a combination of traditional short lectures, hands-on small lab projects performed in two-person student teams, and a team-selected special project related to their field of study.

Out of a total nine week course duration, proposals for the special project were accepted by the end of week three from the student teams, with project approval based on significance and relevance to their particular field and on project feasibility. Lecture/Lab study topics included use of development tools (Integrated Development Environment) for microcontrollers, the C programming language, basic electrical circuits, use of sensors, calibration of sensor data, control of actuators, and communication with the microcontrollers. Each lecture was combined with a hands-on lab project followed by a quiz a few days later. Small lecture-related labs comprised two thirds of the course lab time, with the remaining third devoted to the special project. Student understanding of the course material was assessed based on successful demonstration of predetermined lab projects, on ability to make prescribed customized changes to each lab, and on the quizzes. Class size was limited to 30 people, and assessment of the lab projects and the special project were carried out by the instructor and two student assistants. Preliminary results indicate that participants have all successfully demonstrated the small projects to date, and that the students have submitted relevant and challenging proposals – now underway – for their special projects.