One Kit to Rule Them All - Designing Inclusive Lab Kits Across a Whole Programme

Adam Funnell, Senior University Teacher in MEE, discusses how take home lab kits can be enhanced through programme level design of activities and equipment.

The growth in using Take Home Kits to deliver practical engineering teaching is one of our biggest successes and innovations that we have kept from the covid-19 pandemic. When the labs were closed to on-site teaching, we found kits to be a great method for delivering practical learning outcomes across a whole range of courses, but especially in electronics and mechatronics. In activities with intended learning outcomes around practical integration of subsystems and open-ended investigations, kits provide an ideal delivery method. There are further benefits to meeting a range of student learning styles, increasing opportunities for practical learning, and inclusive teaching practice. 

It is common to use kits to illustrate individual experiments or even for modules, but it is rare to work across modules to create a single curated set of parts for use in multiple circumstances. The figure below shows how practical activities (or "labs") are traditionally designed within engineering programmes. Each activity sits within a related module, or perhaps a cluster of labs is created to sit alongside basic knowledge transfer content modules. But in either approach, there is no developmental thread of practical skills, and no co-ordination between the different activities across all of the supporting content to make a coherent practical programme aligned in time with course content.

By giving responsibility for practical engineering education to a dedicated team, learning outcomes can be analysed for overlap and complementary activities. This in turn means that a single set of equipment can be specified and certified safe for take home operations, providing both time and cost efficiencies for staff. We selected a range of passive components, along with an Arduino Uno microcontroller. On top of the basic resistors, capacitors and diodes, we also chose solar panels and small DC motors to enable more exciting small projects to be delivered.

We can develop pathways between each of the practical activities in the kit, to ensure that skills that are carefully shown at basic levels can be applied in future lab activities and reinforce learning.

The figure above shows how practical exercises are structured from basic tasks, and how the activities interrelate with a structure of pre-requisites. Importantly, the practical activities spread across the content modules, shown in red at the bottom right of each activity. While the practical exercises form a coherent pathway on their own, they also line up exactly with the content delivery from each core content module.

For example, a basic activity common to all exercises is basic microcontroller programming, including input and output connected to electronic circuits. This activity can be followed by an exercise in analogue voltage reading, which in turn can be extended to creating and characterising a simple voltmeter. All of the exercises to this point support a "general skills" module and a "programming" module, by providing hands-on experience of working with real equipment. 

However, the next activity can use the voltmeter that students designed, to measure the voltage drop across different coloured LEDs. The fundamental device physics governing the colour of semiconductor devices can be explored with an engaging practical activity. Students can use the voltmeter that they built themselves to explore how the different semiconductor bandgap voltages correspond to different coloured light emitters. This activity supports a more fundamental device physics module within the programme, yet can be served by just the same practical take home kit, and within a coherent pathway of practical exercises.

Similarly other pathways can be created on transistor exercises to link in with both circuit simulation tutorials and fundamental device behaviour; and with solar cell characterisation to explore basic properties before integrating into a full system. By designing the practical exercises across a whole programme at once, practical learning becomes integrated, effective and efficient.

Inclusivity is arguably the most important aspect to design into our lab programmes. We want all students to be able to participate in practical work, with no barriers to gaining important experience. In our analysis, Take Home Kits offer students flexibility to work around caring responsibilities, and enable students to work at their own pace in an environment that is comfortable to them.

However, we discovered important suggestions for improving accessible lab practice while delivering our teaching, including:

• Many of our students have visual impairments, including colourblindness. This presents an issue when working with small components, which may have tiny labels or colour codes to identify them. When working in the lab, this would be mitigated by using multimeters with large screen displays to measure resistors and capacitors, and confirm their value. Portable multimeters can be distributed to students that require them, at the university's cost to ensure access for all.
• Every take home kit must be distributed with a resealable box to hold all of the parts. Some of our students may have young children and/or pets, who should not be left with small parts due to the choking and sharp pointed hazards they present. A strong cardboard box is sufficient and cost-effective for this in our experience, so long as it is resealable.
• The primary enhancement to accessibility of practical work is allowing fully flexible working hours, in addition to or instead of fixed timetable slots. However, the students concerned must also have access to staff support. It is most effective to provide support in real time, using video calls or similar, to help troubleshoot with building circuits and systems. This means staff need to show some degree of flexibility with their time, which in turn needs understanding from leadership teams regarding their workload and time allocation.

Overall, we see Take Home Kits as just one part of a whole package of practical training for engineering education. We are never going to stop delivering in-person practical classes in our laboratories, but along with remote access practicals, simulations and interactive video simulacrums, Take Home Kits help us embed practical education right at the heart of engineering programmes.

You can read our full paper presented at IEEE EDUCON here:
One kit to rule them all: designing take home lab kits at programme level | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore