Traffic Lights Engineering Academy: A Remote Online Education Solution for Creating K-12 STEM Projects Featuring Microcontrollers

Hechuan Wang; Kathleen Dinota; Monica Bugallo

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Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: ECE Division Technical Session 1: Online or Remote Teaching and Curricular Developments
Page Count: 15
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--40849
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/40849
Download Count: 330

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Paper Authors

biography

Hechuan Wang

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Hechuan Wang received his B.S. degree in Automation from Hefei University of Technology, China, in 2014 and received
his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Stony Brook University (SBU) in 2021. His research interests are primarily in
statistical signal processing, machine learning, and their applications. During his Ph.D. study, he actively participated in
the university outreach program, where he designed two remote STEM academies that taught Electrical Engineering to 6-
8th grades online. He is now an Assistant Professor of Practice at SBU, working on the Outreach Program. His
educational interest is in exposing young students to engineering according to the Next Generation Science Standards
(NGSS) and converting the traditional in-lab experiments into remote activities offered online.

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Kathleen Dinota

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Kathleen Dinota received her B.S. in Marine Science and M.S. in Secondary Education, retiring in 2017 after teaching in public schools on Long Island, NY for 31 years. During her career, she taught earth science, biology and chemistry as well as science research. Kathleen has also worked in test development at NY State Education Department as an Education Specialist for the Regents Physical Setting Chemistry exam for the past 20 years. She is a former NYS Master Teacher. Kathleen currently serves as the Engineering Education Project Director and Outreach Coordinator at Stony Brook University. Kathleen helps to develop engineering experiences for students from elementary to high school, ensuring alignment to state education standards and use of appropriate pedagogy and managing related logistics.

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Monica Bugallo Stony Brook University

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Abstract

Microcontroller programming is an essential part of K-12 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. Experience with microcontroller programming is a gateway to many topics in this discipline, such as electrical engineering and programming. Hands-on experiences using microcontrollers are critical for student engagement and deeper understanding. However, as classes and field trips transitioned online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, educators encountered many difficulties adapting the microcontroller experiments to remote online education. One challenge is that traditional computer software for microcontroller experiments is not easy to set up. In remote education, students cannot be expected to install the software and do the configurations on their own computers at home. The second problem is that it is hard to monitor the students' progress and give feedback in real-time. Even though there are many online collaborative coding platforms, none of them support microcontrollers. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive solution for remote education featuring microcontrollers. An online education platform was developed that allows the students to program the microcontroller using CircuitPython with no software installation or configuration. It also allows instructors to monitor students' work remotely in real-time. In addition, a microcontroller development board for experiments in which students apply programming knowledge to the function of traffic lights was designed. A CircuitPython module for the development board was also developed, which allowed the students to focus more on the logic of the traffic lights and less on potential hardware issues. This online education solution can also be adapted to meet different needs by designing different development boards for different scenarios, including breadboard experiments to focus on circuits, adopting more powerful microcontrollers for advanced programming, and a variety of other applications for use in differentiated instruction. The proposed traffic lights engineering academy was provided to a local school district and got positive feedback. The experiences and best practices are also discussed in this paper.

Citation
Format

Wang, H., & Dinota, K., & Bugallo, M. (2022, August), Traffic Lights Engineering Academy: A Remote Online Education Solution for Creating K-12 STEM Projects Featuring Microcontrollers Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40849

TY - CPAPER
AB - Microcontroller programming is an essential part of K-12 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. Experience with microcontroller programming is a gateway to many topics in this discipline, such as electrical engineering and programming. Hands-on experiences using microcontrollers are critical for student engagement and deeper understanding. However, as classes and field trips transitioned online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, educators encountered many difficulties adapting the microcontroller experiments to remote online education. One challenge is that traditional computer software for microcontroller experiments is not easy to set up. In remote education, students cannot be expected to install the software and do the configurations on their own computers at home. The second problem is that it is hard to monitor the students' progress and give feedback in real-time. Even though there are many online collaborative coding platforms, none of them support microcontrollers. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive solution for remote education featuring microcontrollers. An online education platform was developed that allows the students to program the microcontroller using CircuitPython with no software installation or configuration. It also allows instructors to monitor students' work remotely in real-time. In addition, a microcontroller development board for experiments in which students apply programming knowledge to the function of traffic lights was designed. A CircuitPython module for the development board was also developed, which allowed the students to focus more on the logic of the traffic lights and less on potential hardware issues. This online education solution can also be adapted to meet different needs by designing different development boards for different scenarios, including breadboard experiments to focus on circuits, adopting more powerful microcontrollers for advanced programming, and a variety of other applications for use in differentiated instruction. The proposed traffic lights engineering academy was provided to a local school district and got positive feedback. The experiences and best practices are also discussed in this paper.
AU - Hechuan Wang
AU - Kathleen Dinota
AU - Monica Bugallo
CY - Minneapolis, MN
DA - 2022/08/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Traffic Lights Engineering Academy: A Remote Online Education Solution for Creating K-12 STEM Projects Featuring Microcontrollers
UR - https://peer.asee.org/40849
DO - 10.18260/1-2--40849
ER -