Student views on hardware-based problem solving activities for external and on-campus teams

Abstract

[Abstract]: Hardware-based problem solving activities for teams of on-campus and external students have been introduced in a third level problem solving course over the past 3 years. The problems typically involve the teams in the acquisition and analysis of genuine data, the development and implementation of models for the hardware performance, and the testing of their solutions on the hardware. However, such activities are resource-intensive and it was not clear if the students shared our enthusiasm for hardware-centric problem solving. We have sought such evidence from the students through feedback and survey tools. It appears that the students’ perspectives on hardware-based problem solving are closely aligned with ours and that their interest in the course is enhanced by the hardware-based approach.