Weaving Failure Analysis into a First-Year Robotics Project

Kathleen Harper; Richard Freuler

Download Paper | Permalink

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: First-Year Programs Division Technical Session 5: Design and Robotics
Page Count: 8
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--41377
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/41377
Download Count: 278

Paper Authors

biography

Kathleen Harper Case Western Reserve University

visit author page

Kathy Harper is the assistant director of the Roger E. Susi first-year engineering experience at Case Western Reserve University.

visit author page

biography

Richard Freuler The Ohio State University

visit author page

RICHARD J. FREULER (Rick)
Rick Freuler is a Professor of Practice Emeritus in the Department of Engineering Education in the College of Engineering at Ohio State. Dr. Rick retired in June 2021 after 47 years at the university where he served as the inaugural Director of the Fundamentals of Engineering for Honors (FEH) Program from 2008 to 2021. He taught the two-semester FEH engineering course sequence and was active in engineering education research. He was also affiliated with the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department and conducted scale model investigations of gas turbine installations for jet engine test cells and for marine and industrial applications of gas turbines at the Aerospace Research Center at Ohio State. Dr. Freuler earned his Bachelor of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering (1974), his B.S. in Computer and Information Science (1974), his M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering (1974), and his Ph.D. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering (1991) all from The Ohio State University.

visit author page

Download Paper | Permalink

Abstract

This complete evidence-based practice paper describes the evolution of what began as a failure analysis component in an existing first-year cornerstone course. The University X first-year engineering honors program engages students in an intensive design-and-build robotics project. The primary educational goal is to give students a realistic engineering experience, leading to educated decisions about whether engineering is the profession they want for themselves, and, if so, which engineering discipline to pursue as a major. The real-world engineering elements include teamwork, budgeting, project planning, communicating orally and in writing, documenting, microcontroller programming, constructing, and electrical wiring. All of these experiences are incorporated within the overall design, testing, and refining of a product.

The robot project has been offered for over two decades and continues to evolve. It has always included required performance tests at relatively regular intervals. These are to help keep the teams progressing on a reasonable schedule, but also help them determine whether their product is performing as intended. Instructor observations indicated that many teams were approaching the performance tests primarily as local endpoints and were not taking advantage of their formative nature. Instead of discussions of long-term solutions, teams were focusing on the short-term achievement of passing a particular performance test. To combat this tendency, in 2017, a failure analysis component was added to the course. The additional element required any team that scored fifty percent or less on a performance test to engage in a post-performance test analysis. They were to identify the causes for why the robot did not achieve the goals of the test, along with likely strategies for remedying the problems identified.

In the first semester of this new required assignment, there were four performance tests, and about half of the participating teams engaged in one or more failure analyses. Coding of the student responses, focusing on the causes of failure and the proposed solutions for mitigating it, showed that while students were able to describe a variety of possible causes for the failures, their analyses were lacking in suggestions for how to address the failures. Additionally, a non-negligible number of teams proposed solutions that did not match with any of the problems they described. Further, a question on the end-of-course evaluation indicated that while many students found value in the assignment, many also missed the point of the exercise.

Subsequently, the requirement was revised so that all teams would submit a reflection following each performance test, regardless of its outcome. The new version of the assignment also included more scaffolding asking students specifically how they would address each problem identified. Additionally, it asked students to identify strengths of the design, not just the weaknesses, and explicitly prompted them to think about the following performance test and the next time the robot would need to perform the tasks from the test they had just completed.

This paper includes the details of the revised version of the assignment and a qualitative analysis of the student responses to determine whether the revisions led to more productive iterative thinking on the part of the students. Further, the authors investigated whether there was a link between characteristics of the student responses and the final success of their robots. The paper concludes with implications for future implementations of this exercise.

Citation
Format

Harper, K., & Freuler, R. (2022, August), Weaving Failure Analysis into a First-Year Robotics Project Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41377

TY - CPAPER
AB - This complete evidence-based practice paper describes the evolution of what began as a failure analysis component in an existing first-year cornerstone course. The University X first-year engineering honors program engages students in an intensive design-and-build robotics project. The primary educational goal is to give students a realistic engineering experience, leading to educated decisions about whether engineering is the profession they want for themselves, and, if so, which engineering discipline to pursue as a major. The real-world engineering elements include teamwork, budgeting, project planning, communicating orally and in writing, documenting, microcontroller programming, constructing, and electrical wiring. All of these experiences are incorporated within the overall design, testing, and refining of a product.

The robot project has been offered for over two decades and continues to evolve. It has always included required performance tests at relatively regular intervals. These are to help keep the teams progressing on a reasonable schedule, but also help them determine whether their product is performing as intended. Instructor observations indicated that many teams were approaching the performance tests primarily as local endpoints and were not taking advantage of their formative nature. Instead of discussions of long-term solutions, teams were focusing on the short-term achievement of passing a particular performance test. To combat this tendency, in 2017, a failure analysis component was added to the course. The additional element required any team that scored fifty percent or less on a performance test to engage in a post-performance test analysis. They were to identify the causes for why the robot did not achieve the goals of the test, along with likely strategies for remedying the problems identified.

In the first semester of this new required assignment, there were four performance tests, and about half of the participating teams engaged in one or more failure analyses. Coding of the student responses, focusing on the causes of failure and the proposed solutions for mitigating it, showed that while students were able to describe a variety of possible causes for the failures, their analyses were lacking in suggestions for how to address the failures. Additionally, a non-negligible number of teams proposed solutions that did not match with any of the problems they described. Further, a question on the end-of-course evaluation indicated that while many students found value in the assignment, many also missed the point of the exercise.

Subsequently, the requirement was revised so that all teams would submit a reflection following each performance test, regardless of its outcome. The new version of the assignment also included more scaffolding asking students specifically how they would address each problem identified. Additionally, it asked students to identify strengths of the design, not just the weaknesses, and explicitly prompted them to think about the following performance test and the next time the robot would need to perform the tasks from the test they had just completed.

This paper includes the details of the revised version of the assignment and a qualitative analysis of the student responses to determine whether the revisions led to more productive iterative thinking on the part of the students. Further, the authors investigated whether there was a link between characteristics of the student responses and the final success of their robots. The paper concludes with implications for future implementations of this exercise.

AU - Kathleen Harper
AU - Richard Freuler
CY - Minneapolis, MN
DA - 2022/08/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Weaving Failure Analysis into a First-Year Robotics Project
UR - https://peer.asee.org/41377
DO - 10.18260/1-2--41377
ER -