NSF Awards: 1915614
With support from the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources (IUSE:EHR), this project aims to serve the national interest by implementing an evidence-based, experiment-focused teaching approach in multiple STEM disciplines. The Experiment Centric Pedagogy (ECP) has been successful in promoting motivation and enhancing academic achievement of electrical engineering students. ECP uses an inexpensive, safe, and portable electronic instrumentation system that can be used in classrooms and student laboratories. When paired with appropriate software and sensors, it can be used to measure a wide range of properties, from vibration to oxygen levels. In this Engaged Student Learning project, ECP was adapted for use in biology, chemistry, civil engineering, computer science, industrial engineering, transportation systems, and physics. Because using electronic instrumentation to make scientific measurements is common in all STEM disciplines, ECP is an especially valuable STEM teaching approach.
So far in the project, ECP has been adapted and implemented, in Biology, Civil Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Physics and Transportation System. The project has impacted more than 1,000 STEM students at an historically black university. The project is presently at its year. Various refinements have been made in the project execution. The first project objective is to provide workshops at which STEM faculty will learn how to use ECP as an active learning pedagogy. These workshops were conducted in Winter 2020, Summer 2020, Winter 2021 and Summer 2022 respectively and they were opened to all STEM faculty, not just project faculty.
Catherine Quinlan
What a great opportunity for students to build additional skills during these workshops. I love that you provided workshops that were open to various STEM faculty. What a great project!
Iris Wagstaff
Carolyn White
Opeyemi Adeniran
Oludare Owolabi
Assistant Professor
Welcome! Thank you for checking out the Adapting an Experiment-centric Teaching Approach to Increase Student Achievement in Multiple STEM Disciplines (ETA-STEM) Project. The project aims to promote motivation and academic achievement of students in Multiple STEM Disciplines at Morgan State University. The Experiment Centric Pedagogy (ECP) uses an inexpensive, safe, and portable electronic instrumentation system that can be used in classrooms, student laboratories and at home.
So far in the project, ECP has been adapted and implemented, in seven STEM disciplines: Biology, Chemistry, Civil Engineering, Computer Science, Industrial Engineering, Physics and Transportation System. The project has impacted more than 1,000 STEM students, a considerable proportion of whom are from groups historically underrepresented in STEM. The project is presently at its third year.
Our video explains the impact of ECP in STEM learning. Incorporating ECP into STEM curriculum has shown to improve motivation, enthusiasm and learning amongst students. We hope that you enjoy this 3-minute video, we will be more than happy to answer your questions regarding ECP, and the STEM curriculum at Morgan State University. Feel free to ask all your questions.
You can also visit our project website
Please enjoy.
Iris Wagstaff
Carolyn White
Opeyemi Adeniran
Frank Efe
Opeyemi Adeniran
Graduate Student
We are happy to have you watch our video, which showcases in 3 minutes the impact of ECP in the STEM program.
Briefly,
Experimeny-Centric Pedagogy (ECP) is an active, hands-on pedagogical approach that focuses on educating the student beyond the classroom theoretical approach. The ECP enables students to see and interact with the outcome of their theoretical understanding of a particular course, thus activating their innovative minds and preparing them for real-world problems.
Iris Wagstaff
Carolyn White
Opeyemi Adeniran
Daniel Serrano
Great project! Our undergrad experiments program also uses a team approach and we're always trying to think of the best ways to create teams.
How are teams formed in your program, and what pros and cons do you see to your team formation approach?
Opeyemi Adeniran
Carolyn White
Oludare Owolabi
Assistant Professor
Thank you for your question, teams are formed by the instructor implementing ECP and I believe the composition of the team is diverse based on culture, race and academic performance. My colleague, Dr. Anthony Kinyua from the department of Physics will further comment on team composition.
Thank you and God bless.
Opeyemi Adeniran
Sarah Haavind
Senior Research Project Manager
Thank you Dr. Owolabi for your early response to Daniel's great question here about team formation. I'm sure many of your viewers would love to hear more. As Dr. Quinn mentions above, it was hugely insightful to open your workshops to any interested faculty. In addition to what Daniel asks here, it would be helpful to have more detail on whether team formation is part of the training or left to faculty discretion. Sounds like that may be a vital link for not just your project, but for disseminating to others. Thank you in advance for any further light you or your colleagues can shed in this interesting direction.
Iris Wagstaff
Opeyemi Adeniran
Jeff Milbourne
STEM Coordinator-Writing and Learning Center
Thanks all for your video and your project. The preliminary outcomes and findings seem encouraging with respect to impact.
I'm curious: what are some of the implementation challenges you've faced trying to phase in ECP at your institution and how have you addressed them? You mention some faculty workshops-how are those going and what plans do you have to support broader implementation moving forward?
Finally, what were some of the experiments that students were doing at home with their families (mentioned around the 2.50 mark of the video)? It's encouraging that students were taking what they learned from the classroom and teaching their family members.
Iris Wagstaff
Opeyemi Adeniran
Chukwuemeka Duru
Graduate Research Associate
Thank you Jeff for your questions. Most of the experiments that have been implemented so far in the program were done using portable electronic set-ups enabling students to carry out the experiments at the comfort of their homes. Experiments like understanding the basics of combinational logic for students in Electrical Engineering and those in Computer Science, understanding the concepts of RLC in electrical circuits for students in physics, understanding the concepts of hooke's law, determining pressure inside thin walled vessels and understanding the effect of applied pressure hence strain on a beam (a metal ruler was used in this case since it is readily available alongside some in house developed circuits).
The challenges faced thus far are the diverse technical skills of the students meaning that most students may need more time to understand the concepts. In most cases, due to our systematic approach to team formations, we do pair the brighter students with others of a bit lower technical skills so they can learn from each other.
We also engaged faculties through workshops by letting them know the core essence of the ECP program which includes, practical demonstrations, students inclusiveness, Q&A sessions during the class to name just a few. This approach has yielded good outcomes by having the students engaged throughout the lecture while they try out experimentally the theoretical underpinnings of most Engineering concepts taught in STEM.
Iris Wagstaff
Opeyemi Adeniran
Ekundayo Shittu
Experimentation is always a winner for hands-on, experiential learning. The team-based approach is also great. Kudos to the team. I voted!
Opeyemi Adeniran
Sam Alamu
Thanks Dr. Shittu.
Opeyemi Adeniran
Onyewudiala PhD
Good job! It's always better to learn Engineering and Sciences through Experimentation.
Opeyemi Adeniran
Bhaskar Upadhyay
Associate Professor
ECP's idea of low-cost experiments is commendable as it provides opportunities for many students from BIPOC students and schools. How are the low-cost experiments decided? How do other schools have access to these materials? What are some of the ways you have measured improvements, specifically BIPOC students' skills and understanding of STEM skills and processes? How is an experiment made culturally appropriate or connected?
Opeyemi Adeniran
Oludare Owolabi
Assistant Professor
Thank Prof. Upadhyay, each of the set of kits may be around the cost of a textbook, another advantage of ECP was that during the pandemic we were able to ship the lab kits to students. We measured major key constructs associated with student learning with validated instruments.
Opeyemi Adeniran
Efe Frank
Thank you Prof. Bhaskar. Our team has been able to purchase various ECP kits at a very low rate, which the students can afford at their convenience. Such example was seen in ECP Physics laboratory experiments, where resistors, mini loudspeakers, Adalm M1k device, to mention a few, were used to carry out various experiments in the laboratory as well as at their respective homes. These kits are cost effective and from the outcome of our result, we could say students acquired more with the ECP experiment compared to non ECP.
However, we measure improvements by simply comparing Non ECP classes to ECP classes and various simulations were done, which shows that at the end of each class, students were motivated and acquired more knowledge in ECP hands-on experiment classes.
Thank you.
Opeyemi Adeniran
Iris Wagstaff
Thanks for this critical work. Project-based learning that can be employed across multiple disciplines to actively engage students has a potential that is limitless and can extend to educational and career opportunities that will support a diverse pool of students to address national and global challenges.
Oludare Owolabi
Assistant Professor
Thank you.