Hybrid senior project courses in engineering education during the pandemic challenge

Abstract 2021 American Society for Engineering Education Pacific Southwest (ASEE PSW) Conference Paper title: Hybrid senior project courses in engineering education during the pandemic challenge Abstract EGR 4810, 4820, and 4830, are a series of required Project Design Principles and Applications- "Cap-stone" Senior Project courses. Students taking these courses are highly depended on on-campus labs and off-campus test sites. However, the COVID-19 restrictions challenge the academic environment and restrict the students' ability to access the manufacturing facilities and to work together. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and outcomes of the senior project courses during the pandemic. This Senior Project is comprised of interdisciplinary majors with multiple faculty advisors from Aerospace Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Chemistry & Biochemistry, and Mechanical Engineering. The project includes investigation of novel technologies for increasing the endurance of UAVs, mainly by increasing power-to-weight ratio through parasitic weight reduction of structural and power systems and generating/harvesting energy mid-flight. These courses are a mixture of virtual ZOOM weekly entire team meetings, sub-team with industry partner meetings, students' garage manufacturing, and a second semester in-person meetings. The courses aim to motivate students to apply engineering knowledge for new product development of engineering systems. Students can access the tutoring, supplemental instruction, and to store their assignments and other documents through the project team OneDrive and emails of co-advisors. The weekly virtual Zoom meetings give supplemental instruction and coordinate and assign which students will participate in laboratory activities, and training for COVID-19 social distancing and hygiene requirements before each weeks Lab sign-in used by the students. The courses proved to be exciting learning experiences for the college students. They are highly engaged and motivated to work on the projects. We observed that the senior project teams become more responsible and proactive regarding their work. They applied critical thinking skills and creativeness in developing a quadcopter / airplane hybrid payload delivery/surveillance UAV, making presentations, and implementation of the garage manufacturing. Overall, the experiences have motivated the students doing a great job to learn and approach engineering even with the pandemic challenge.