Abstract:

The past three years have presented university faculty with unprecedented challenge in teaching their students while confronting the COVID-19 pandemic. This has been particularly challenging when attempting to use project based pedagogies and especially when using team structures in classes. This paper discusses a comparative experience between the use of project-based learning for first year university students and a return to the classroom. The students in these experiences were placed in teams across engineering majors and they worked on contemporary challenges in engineering within their teams. They were required to engage in a makerspace experience in which they created a prototype of a potential solution to an engineering challenge using 3D printing. The research compares the online experience during a time that students and faculty were not allowed to attend face-to-face classes to that of when COVID was still somewhat active however students and faculty had returned to campus. The research compares the resulting course products and also the level of propensity of innovation and grit that the students exhibited in the compared experiences.

Rubrics with multiple dimensions were used to analyze the students' work and their associated experiences. Results of this engineering education study indicate that although the students were presented with challenges of COVID-19 like had never been experienced before in colleges and universities, their projects were successfully completed with innovation and creativity. While the students who were face-to face in the classroom had distinct advantages in terms of access to their teams, both groups designed, created and presented highly innovative projects. The grit of the student in the online year during the first year of the pandemic was demonstrated in the manner and observed behaviors they engaged with in navigating team experiences. This was very impressive and resulted in the student to having great successes in their projects. Scores across years were not substantially different, however innovation in terms of team experience and associated grit really shined for the students in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords:

Makerspace, COVID-19, distance learning, project-based, teams, grit.