Incorporating Design Skills in an Introductory Electric Circuits Laboratory

While training students in electric circuits is difficult enough, training them in the art of design presents an entirely different challenge. Traditional methods used to teach theory and recipe-style laboratory experiments are ineffective at developing design skills. In this paper, we describe our approach at addressing this problem by incorporating a genuine design component in an introductory circuits lab, through a level-appropriate design challenge. The challenge is open-ended enough that a modest amount of searching, application of theory, and synthesis of knowledge from prior experiments is required to complete it. The task was to build a constant-current power source using an Arduino microcontroller. We found that students struggled to disassociate from the memorization-based learning approach they have become accustomed to, highlighting the need for more design-related content as early in the curriculum as possible. Despite the challenge, students generally found the design experiment engaging, as indicated by their responses to specific report questions. The paper also presents the results of using this design lab for ABET assessment of several student outcomes.