LDAPS: An Innovative Solution for a Low-Cost, Exciting Laboratory Class in Engineering

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The goal of this project is to develop a curriculum for engineering students and liberal arts majors on laboratory experimentation. The curriculum spans two courses: an introductory class geared for liberal arts students (mainly pre-service teachers engaged in teacher preparation programs) and first-year engineers, and a required junior-level mechanical engineering course. In the introductory course, students concentrate on simple experimentation techniques, learning how to interface a computer to an experiment and how to do simple statistical analysis of the data. Students in the upper-level course learn the electronics behind the data acquisition systems, learn more in-depth signal processing, and work on oral and written skills. The curriculum is based on the LDAPS, or LegoTM Data Acquisition and Prototyping System, which is a pedagogical technique originally developed for K-6 science education. The LDAP System uses LegoTM building blocks and a LabVIEWTM computer interface to provide the tools for students to design, build, instrument, and execute their own experiments. The LegoTM blocks give the student the freedom in designing the experimental setup and LabVIEWTM gives the signal processing freedom needed to effectively interrogate the data. For example, students learned advanced digital filtering techniques by building a LegoTM gray-scale scanner and active control through building a car which tries to drive around obstacles. This pedagogical technique was successfully implemented in a pilot study, with excellent student reviews.