Contribution: This study explores the elements engineering students perceive as important for developing their learner agency in the context of intercultural project-based learning (PBL) teams. Background: The concept of learner agency has recently gained prominence due to its relevance for student-centeredness, autonomy, self-regulation, and…

Contribution: A distinct instructional approach to laboratory activities for power system machines, based on hybrid project-based learning (h-PBL). Students develop their own laboratory procedures and explain their results. This approach creates a positive environment to improve students' problem-solving, and their control design and…

Contribution: This paper reports engineering students ' practical epistemic cognition by studying their interactional work in situ. Studying "epistemologies in action" the study breaks away from mainstream approaches that describe this in terms of beliefs or of stage theories. Background: In epistemology, knowledge is traditionally seen…

Contribution: A conceptual model for task allocation among student teams in project-based learning (PBL) is proposed in this paper, along with a discussion on ways gender can affect teams' apportioning of roles in inequitable ways in STEM PBL. Background: Studies find that men and women report taking on different roles in PBL projects, and that…

This paper presents the introduction of problem-based learning (PBL) in a power electronics course at the University of Oviedo, Gijon, Spain, by means of two practical projects: the design and construction of a switching-mode power supply (SMPS) prototype and the static study of a dc-dc converter topology. The goal of this innovation was for…

This paper describes a newly designed upper-level undergraduate and graduate course, Autonomous Mobile Robots. The course employs active, cooperative, problem-based learning and is grounded in the fundamental computational problems in mobile robotics defined by Dudek and Jenkin. Students receive a broad survey of robotics through lectures, weekly…

Project-based learning (PBL) and cooperative learning are, in various aspects, very superior education methodologies compared to other traditional ones. They are highly appropriate methodologies for elective courses, as they exert a strong attraction on the students, quite apart from their educational advantages. This paper describes how PBL and…

Problem-based learning has been at the core of significant developments in engineering education in recent years. This term refers to any learning environment in which the problem drives the learning, because it is posed in such a way that students realize they need to acquire new knowledge before the problem can be solved. This paper presents the…

The need for professional programmers in embedded applications has become critical for industry growth. This need has increased the popularity of embedded software design courses, which are resource-intensive and space-limited in traditional real lab-based instruction. To overcome geographic and time barriers in enhancing practical skills that…