CDIO Concept in Challenge Based Learning Anssi Ikonen
Antti Piironen
Kimmo Saurén
IT-department Vanha maantie 6 02620 Espoo +358207836383
IT-department Vanha maantie 6 02620 Espoo +358207836403
IT-department Vanha maantie 6 02620 Espoo +358207836410
[email protected]
[email protected]
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Pasi Lankinen IT-department Vanha maantie 6 02620 Espoo +358207836313
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could argue that it is easier to pin out what is not part of an embedded computing field than the opposite. Because of this it is increasingly more difficult to plan and implement successful embedded engineering education. How to decide what is essential for embedded engineers of the future?
ABSTRACT In this paper an implementation of Challenge Based Learning in Embedded Engineering as a part of CDIO Syllabus in Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences (UAS) is studied and described. CDIO Initiative is an educational framework for engineering education to integrate active learning methods as fundamental part of the syllabus. The Challenge Based Learning (CBL) method and its implementation described in this paper are based on a study of project based learning in engineering education started in academic year 2004 [1]. The project described in this paper is the 5th Challenge Based Learning project which took place during the spring semester of the academic year 2008 – 2009. The paper focuses on introducing Challenge Based Learning method and the implementation of the CBL project as one of the first steps in transformation to CDIO syllabus. Also a discussion of learning outcomes, required resources and the experiences of tutoring lecturers are included as well as some recommendations for arranging similar learning events.
Embedded industry is producing new products faster than ever before. Market window for new products is getting shorter all the time. This leads to a constant trading between functionality and available time and resources. The result is that to survive as an embedded engineer one has to have competitive project and product lifecycle skills which are not easily achieved. Even though some aspects of project work and management can certainly be taught by using traditional teaching methods, but to achieve competitive engineering skills modern and more activating teaching methods are required. CDIO Initiative is a program to develop engineering education to meet the requirements for a modern engineer and to emphasize the ability of a student to be able to engineer. CDIO stands for Conceive-Develop-Implement-Operate and it is an educational framework for universities and engineering schools to prepare engineering students for the forthcoming challenges by integrating product development projects as fundamental part of the engineering education. The CDIO Initiative has been developed in co-operation of universities, industry, engineers and students and it dictates the guidelines for engineering syllabus. The CDIO Initiative is based on the principle that product and system lifecycle development and deployment are the appropriate context for engineering education. [1] One of the essential ideas of CDIO Initiative is that “graduating engineers should be able to conceive-design-implement-operate complex value-added engineering systems in a modern group-based environment” [3].
Categories and Subject Descriptors C.3 [Special-Purpose and Application-Based Systems] Real-time and embedded system
General Terms Measurement, Documentation, Experimentation.
Performance,
Design,
Keywords
Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences has joined the CDIO Initiative and there is an on-going process of developing and transforming the engineering syllabus to follow the framework stated by CDIO Initiative.
Challenge Based Learning, student project, teaching resources, tutoring.
1.
INTRODUCTION
Engineers working in embedded computing area are facing more challenges and requirements for engineering competence than ever before. With the wide integration of embedded systems one
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The challenges and the need for development in engineering education were recognized in Information Technology Degree Programme of Helsinki Metropolia UAS years before the decision
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against other project groups who start from the same level of knowledge with the same tools and means to accomplish their goal. Thus the name Challenge Based Learning. CBL is also known as a part of a larger collaborative project initiated in 2008 called Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow – Today (ACOT) [10]. The authors want to emphasize that the CBL method described in this paper is not based on CBL concept adopted by ACOT.
to join the CDIO Initiative. During the academic year 2004 alternative methods for engineering education was studied and problem based learning was seen as an effective choice. Based on problem based learning a multidisciplinary project was developed and organized for 2nd year engineering students. The very first projects were intensively studied and the implementation of the project was developed based on the results of the study [1]. During the academic year 2006 the implementation of the multidisciplinary project reached its current form where the goal of the project groups is to respond to a product development challenge. Hence the method was named Challenge Based Learning. The first experiences and learning outcomes of the CBL project have been presented in the 4th International CDIO Conference [4].
3.
INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECT
The subject of this paper is the multidisciplinary research and product development project called Suvi-project. “Suvi” is an acronym from Finnish words meaning embedded engineering (Sulautettu tietotekniikka) and communications (Viestintä), but it also means the dawn of the summer which matches the timing of the project. The project is a product development challenge for 2nd year engineering students in information technology department to design, build, test and operate a remotely controlled robot and to participate to a competition with their design. Project groups are responsible of planning, designing and building their own electronics starting from printed circuit boards and mechanics. Since the students are completing their 2nd year of engineering studies their knowledge of electronics, embedded programming, building and testing of prototypes and project management is still on a basic level. Thus the subject of the project is challenging and requires high motivation and dedication from the students.
2. PROBLEM AND CHALLENGE BASED LEARNING Problem based learning is an old method for teaching that has been used more than 30 years and it has been widely proven to be effective in various areas of education [5]. PBL is basically based on the idea that students learn by actively solving problems [6]. The teacher should guide the problem solving process and he or she has to be able to provide necessary background information without giving any solutions. Teacher's role in problem based learning is to provide a suitable topic, divide students into groups and handle any unseen problems that should occur. A suitable topic for problem based learning provides opportunities for student creativity. So even though teacher might plan the problem with certain difficulty with probable solutions, there should always be multiple ways to solve the given problem. This means that the teacher might not know anymore everything about the problem.
4. 4.1
IMPLEMENTATION Curriculum
The flow chart in figure 1 represents the structure of CBL project related courses for 2nd year information technology students in Embedded Engineering module and the multidisciplinary CBL project discussed in this paper. First year of studies, marked with dashed lines in the flow chart, consists mostly of basic courses, e.g. mathematics, physics, digital circuits, and circuit theory [11]. During the 2nd year more advanced topics are studied and the combined project discussed in this paper focuses on combining the topics of three courses together using challenge based learning method.
When developing and implementing a PBL project or other activating learning methods there are some reported problems in literature which should be taken into consideration [6][7][8]. First, the change in teachers’ role is not straightforward, since the activity will change from the traditional lecturer-instructor into tutor-facilitator. This requires that the teachers themselves must be willing to adapt new pedagogical ideas and methods. Second, the students’ roles also change from passive receiver to active member of a project group. This change is not always easy and the teacher must be present to guide and activate the learning process. Third, keeping the project groups together may be difficult. For example, the group may break up easily if personal values are different or if a small argument just happens to escalate out of the proportion. Fourth, the change to PBL is a tremendous task: it requires a change from traditional ways of teaching and operating to something new and possibly unknown, and the change is never easy [9]. Last, but not least, a successful learning process requires high motivation and good project management skills from both students and teachers. Therefore, without guidance and support problem based learning process will become almost impossible to handle.
Autumn semester of the 2nd year.
Circuit theory, Mathematics, Physics, Etc.
T0161
T0162
Electronic Systems
Electronic Components and Circuits
Digital Circuits.
Challenge Based Learning is a concept adopted by the authors of this paper to indicate the fact that the subject of this paper is not only an implementation of PBL in engineering education in a form of product development project. Instead the project is a multidisciplinary research and product development project with a challenge and an opportunity to test one’s ideas, skills and results
T0192
T0022
Microprocessors
Embedded Systems Programming
T0189 Programming
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CBL Project during the spring semester of the 2nd year.
1st year of studies.
KIELT0164 Finnish for Information Technology
presentations. The main purpose is to give students adequate communication skills required in their future position as an engineer.
Figure 1. The structure of courses involved in the CBL project.
4.1.1
Electronics Courses
The primary goal of electronics education for information technology students is to provide students an adequate understanding of embedded systems hardware. Electronic Systems T0161 and Electronics Components and Circuits provide the foundation for understanding electronics [11]. The studies begin from understanding the principle of negative feedback on operational amplifier circuits, followed by most common operational amplifier applications, and concluding to active filters. After finishing the usage of operational amplifiers, the discrete active components are introduced with application examples. Practical application examples from the world of microcontrollers are constantly introduced throughout both of the electronics courses.
4.2
The actual student work started on January 2009 with kick-off meeting. The topic for Suvi-09 project and associated important dates like document submission dates were presented to the students. After the kick-off meeting students prepared their preliminary project plans. Two weeks after the kick-off a tutoring meeting was arranged and the groups had an opportunity to ask questions about the project plan and any theoretical or practical issues regarding the project.
The combined project required some modifications to the syllabus. Some of the topics were emphasized in order to support the CBL project. Some additional laboratory sessions were also included in syllabus to provide guidance for the project groups.
4.1.2
Software Courses
The project guidelines agreed by the tutoring teachers dictated some regulations and specifications for the product, i.e. the robot. Project groups were allowed to use only two electric motors for the transmission and a wooden base plate both provided by the school. Additionally school sponsored each project group with a 20 euro budget for components. The total budget was not restricted but the project groups were required to acquire the extra funds themselves. Passive electronic components, printed circuit board material, tools and some mechanical parts were provided by the school.
The properties and usage of microprocessors are taught during the fall semester of second year on a course named Microprocessors T0192. Programming T0189 course includes the principles of Clanguage. After those two courses, Embedded Systems Programming T0022 course combines the previous topics and the new concept of embedded systems is introduced. [11] The Embedded Systems Programming course gives basic understanding on how to develop software for embedded processors. The course extends the knowledge acquired in the Programming course by introducing the usage of C-language in embedded systems. Laboratory work introduces students with debugging methods of an embedded system. Processor interrupts are an important focus point and the programming of interrupts is taught. However, much of learning in the embedded course is achieved by debugging different problems faced in the laboratories.
4.3 Tutoring and monitoring student progress The progress of the project groups was monitored in several project meetings. Project minutes were submitted and added to a project portfolio. The project portfolio was inspected by teachers. Additionally the project groups were required to make two customer presentations during the project. In the first customer presentation the audience was the tutoring teachers in the role of a customer. Project groups presented their plans and they were given instant feedback about plans for technical solutions as well as their presentation skills. In the second customer presentation approximately in the half way of the project a real customer from local industry was invited to the meeting. Project groups presented their project plan, marketing material, status of the project and a prototype of their design. They were provided with instant feedback after their presentation.
In Information Technology department of Helsinki Metropolia UAS we have selected an 8051-based microprocessors as our educational embedded systems platform. Students are using processor boards designed in Metropolia UAS as the educational platform of embedded programming [12]. The boards are designed to simplify adding new hardware modules into microcontroller in order to evaluate different types of input and output devices. Even though an educational 8051 hardware platform is used during the theoretical part of the Embedded Systems Programming and in testing of the prototypes of the project, the groups designed and built their own 8051-based microprocessor boards as a part of the CBL project.
4.1.3
The start of the project
Planning of Suvi-09 project started in November 2008 with a meeting in which guidelines for Suvi-09 project were discussed by participating lecturers. The project title with many technical details was agreed. Also the main principles of division of students into groups were agreed. Special attention should be paid in forming the project groups to avoid problems and drawbacks in the group forming process. [8] General rule was to form heterogeneous groups with three students per group. The total number of students was approximately 80.
Tutoring of the project groups was organized in two ways: Voluntary laboratory sessions were reserved to the schedules every other week during the spring semester when the project took place. During these sessions at least one teacher was present to guide the groups with building and testing their prototypes. Another way of providing tutoring was the voluntary meetings with the tutor and project group. Additionally the lectures of the
Language Studies
Finnish for Information Technology is a compulsory course, which teaches group meeting practices and documentation, writing official documents and giving short professional
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malfunction in the competition. In such a case evaluation is based mainly on the learning process and group working skills observed by the teachers.
three courses combined in the project offered theoretical knowledge.
4.4
Documentation
4.6
The progress of the project work was documented and the final documentation consisted of: -
Project plan
-
Customer presentation documents
-
Project meetings minutes
-
Technical documentation
Observations
Designing and maintaining a problem based learning project requires always more resources than traditional classroom teaching. When the original Suvi-project was arranged in academic year 2004 we estimated that the planning and managing the project took at least twice the time than normal classroom teaching with laboratory exercises. Students Comments
Each group submitted their documentation to a project portfolio which was submitted for evaluation at the end of the project. A paper portfolio was used since the Web-based portal was under development when the project was started. [13]
4.5
Based on the student feedback from our previous studies [1], we can say that a multidisciplinary CBL project is a motivating and highly activating method for learning. The groups evidently learned project and group working skills and gained knowledge and experiences on embedded systems design process. Some of the project groups faced problems beyond their engineering capabilities, but were able to overcome them with minor help and guidance. One of the project groups made an excellent remark in the survey after the project where they were asked to define the most important learning outcome of the project. Their response was that "we found out that designing embedded systems is 5% of planning and implementation and 95% of testing and debugging".
Evaluation
The project is treated as a compulsory part of both Electronics Components and Circuits and Embedded Systems Programming courses and it directly affects on the evaluation of both of the courses. Although the courses are individually graded, they both use the competition results as a part of the total grading. As problem based learning emphasizes self-evaluation and the role of the learning process [5] in our implementation the evaluation is based mainly on the documentation and on the outcome of the product development project: the robot and its performance in the competition, which presents the traditional means of evaluating students’ performance. Additionally the learning process of the project groups is evaluated by the lecturers and it may influence the evaluation dramatically. E.g. sometimes a project group that has worked hard and paid lot of effort to their project might not gain success in the competition for some reason.
Teachers Observations This was the 5th time the project was organized and the choice of topic and the over-all management of the project appear to be well in balance. Only a minority of project groups had difficulties in getting the project started and the progress of the project followed the schedule as planned. Project groups did work some extra hours due the challenging nature of the project. Most of the project groups were not satisfied with a basic designing solution and additional features and ambitious solutions were developed.
The students' grades from the project have several parameters. The grades are ranging from 0 (=failed) to 5 (=excellent) and it is a sum of competition (from 0 to 2 points), group excellence in electronics and software (from 0 to 3 points), and achievements in documentation (from -1 to 1 points).
Furthermore, ECTS system study unit is based on the estimate of students working time on the topic. We had allocated about 50 hours of students work on this project, but it seems that in average the students did much more than that. Some project groups even found themselves spending few Saturdays in the electronics laboratory. However, the students majoring in Embedded Engineering will get acknowledged their hard work in future courses, where they can continue developing their robots.
The competition points are combined from three different categories: 1.
Speed: Three trials on 800 cm acceleration track. The competitors are sorted based on the times.
2.
Robot Wrestling: The goal is to disable the opponent robot or push it outside the ring.
3.
5.
Discussion
Based on our five years experience in challenge based learning project in the area of the Embedded Engineering, we have noticed that CBL is an effective and highly activating method of teaching. It is one of the first steps to implement CDIO Initiative in Information Technology department of Helsinki Metropolia UAS. We can conclude that CBL project follows the CDIO guidelines very well and it offers an opportunity for the engineering students to conceive, develop, implement and operate. The complete transformation to CDIO syllabus is yet not complete, but the CBL project is an excellent indication of the progress.
Tuning: The appearance of the robots is judged by other students. The competitors are sorted based on the votes given by the students themselves and the spectators of the event.
Final competition results are then calculated by adding the sorting numbers of each group together and sorting that list of merits. This final list is then divided into three parts; two points are given to highest group, one point is given to middle group, and no points are given to the lowest part. Teachers could however give better grades than the competition results would entitle. The reason for this was that sometimes even excellent robot might
CBL project as a teaching method however requires more active involvement from the teachers. Each project works out differently every year even though the subject is more or less the same.
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ensures that all groups are more or less on the same level of engineering skills.
Teachers must actively follow progress of groups and be prepared to make adjustments when needed. Based on the feedback from the students we can conclude that a combining separate projects of electronics, embedded systems programming, and documentation as a larger CBL project is far more motivating than having three separate project works.
Eliminate extra variables to simplify project maintenance. Especially, do not allow any exemptions or special arrangements. The CBL project as problem based learning in general requires extra time and effort from teachers. Do not think that dividing students to groups and giving them a common task means implementing PBL method for teaching. A successful learning process requires guidance, tutoring and support. Also adequate amount of resources should be allocated for planning and managing the project. In addition, the teachers involved should be highly motivated and devoted to learn and try new pedagogical methods. This requires more resources compared to traditional class-room teaching and the allocation of the resources should be agreed in advance with the employer.
Additionally the challenging nature of the topic increase students’ motivation and dedication to the project. To find your self building and testing a remotely controlled robot and to have an opportunity to compete against peer groups is a challenge hard to resist. The percentage of the projects finished before the deadline indicates also that the students found this way of working very motivating even though the subject for the project was rather demanding for 2nd year engineering students. Based on our experiences we give some recommendations for arranging a similar event: Having enough of planning resources play a crucial role on getting the project started and completed successfully. The teachers of each course must spend considerable time together outlining the main goals, synchronizing the course curricula and to agree on the evaluation of the project work. Also the information flow between the teachers has a major effect on the success the project. Project outlines must be planned carefully in advance and students should receive same information from each teacher regarding the project and there should be one source of information available.
6.
CONCLUSIONS
Introducing Embedded Engineering for 2nd year Information technology students can be effectively done by applying Problem Based Learning principles in a form of CBL project described in this paper. It requires seamless cooperation between teachers, some extra resources, and an interesting topic. This means a lot of hard work for both the students and the teachers, but when the successful completion of the project gives very gratifying moments for everyone. Additionally CBL project is an effective method in implementing the CDIO syllabus for engineering education.
One major factor affecting to successful project work and learning process was the guidance provided by teachers acting as tutors. Active involvement and guidance was required especially during the first weeks of the project. Most of the guidance took place during the first group sessions and in the voluntary laboratory sessions. There were noticeable differences between project groups. Some groups were more innovative and got started with the project very fast and they were able to decide the role of each group member easily when others required more support. It requires professional skills from the teachers to evaluate the group forming process and to see where and when additional guidance is required, yet still remaining purely as a tutor and not to affect on the problem solving process by providing solutions.
In future, we are going to continue the series of Suvi-projects with some modifications. During the last year the academic syllabus of information technology students changed substantially in Helsinki Metropolia UAS. The students will be selecting their majoring option half year earlier as they did prior the changes in syllabus. Practically, this means that there will be fewer students to attend the CBL project. However, since they already have selected their majoring option, they are most likely well motivated to learn Embedded Engineering project skills. Good practices learned from the Suvi-projects are going to be used in other CDIO learning projects in Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. Some parts of it were adopted in the first year students’ Introductory Project during academic year. We also have plans to expand the general idea of our concept to International Summer School on Embedded Digital Signal Processing, which will be organized together with three other European Universities of Applied Sciences.
Select the project topic carefully avoiding too general topics. It is not recommended to let the students to make up their own ideas, simply because these projects are less likely to be completed. This recommendation is based on our experiences organizing the first project. In the academic year 2004-2005 project groups were allowed to come up with their own topics. The result was high motivation and enthusiasm in the beginning of the project, but lower number of projects was completed before the deadline. Major factors affecting the results were too complex and ambitious topics and the lack of competition and support between project groups. In academic year 2005-2006 and from there on project topic was selected by the customer, i.e. teachers, and the result was a higher percentage of successful projects.
7.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to express our gratitude to all students, who took part of Suvi-05, Suvi-06, Suvi-07, Suvi-08 and Suvi-09 projects.
Do not let the students to form their own project groups. Instead let the students evaluate their own experience and interest on different categories of engineering skills like electronics design, programming and documentation. Use this information and your own knowledge to form the project groups. This presents a real life situation where project group must go through a group forming process in the beginning of the project. Additionally this
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8.
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