WinterLab: Developing a low-cost, portable experiment platform to encourage engagement in the electronics lab

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Rouble, Maclean, Dobbs, Matt, Gilbert, Adam
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2020
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author Rouble, Maclean
Dobbs, Matt
Gilbert, Adam
author_facet Rouble, Maclean
Dobbs, Matt
Gilbert, Adam
contents Encouraging student engagement is a key aim in any educational setting, and allowing students the freedom to pursue their own methods of solving problems through independent experimentation has been shown to markedly improve this. In many contexts, however, allowing students this flexibility in their learning is hampered by constraints of the material itself, such as in the electronics laboratory, where expensive and bulky equipment confines the learning environment to the laboratory room. Finding ourselves in the position of teaching one such laboratory course at the undergraduate level, we sought to encourage students to learn through independent investigation and the pursuit of personal projects, by providing a more flexible and inquiry-based learning environment and allowing them to take their measurement equipment -- and their learning -- beyond the laboratory itself. We present this project as a case of design both for and by students, with the lead designer undertaking the project after attending the course in question, and pursuing its development as a foundational step in their graduate career. We discuss the challenges and opportunities we encountered over the course of the design and development process, and the eventual key output of the project: a portable, low-cost, integrated electronics experimentation platform called the Winterlab board.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2010_01426
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle WinterLab: Developing a low-cost, portable experiment platform to encourage engagement in the electronics lab
Rouble, Maclean
Dobbs, Matt
Gilbert, Adam
Physics Education
Encouraging student engagement is a key aim in any educational setting, and allowing students the freedom to pursue their own methods of solving problems through independent experimentation has been shown to markedly improve this. In many contexts, however, allowing students this flexibility in their learning is hampered by constraints of the material itself, such as in the electronics laboratory, where expensive and bulky equipment confines the learning environment to the laboratory room. Finding ourselves in the position of teaching one such laboratory course at the undergraduate level, we sought to encourage students to learn through independent investigation and the pursuit of personal projects, by providing a more flexible and inquiry-based learning environment and allowing them to take their measurement equipment -- and their learning -- beyond the laboratory itself. We present this project as a case of design both for and by students, with the lead designer undertaking the project after attending the course in question, and pursuing its development as a foundational step in their graduate career. We discuss the challenges and opportunities we encountered over the course of the design and development process, and the eventual key output of the project: a portable, low-cost, integrated electronics experimentation platform called the Winterlab board.
title WinterLab: Developing a low-cost, portable experiment platform to encourage engagement in the electronics lab
topic Physics Education
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.01426