Enhancing Engagement holder and Learning Through Hands-on and Experience-Based Education Trevor Hrynyk Assistant Professor Keywords: hands-on; student-led; outside-of-class learning; improved engagement

Why? Most students learn best when material is presented using a range of techniques. Hands-on or experience-driven exercises can be highly effective in enhancing instruction Objectives in the context of engineering curricula: – improve key concept retention – enhance student engagement – provide teaching alternatives for often perceived ‘dry’ engineering material

When? Experience-driven learning activities developed for a number of different settings, each with different goals regarding student learning: as MS graduate TA for an introductory structural analysis course ( ) as PhD student on a grad student team working to create a high-school outreach program ( ) as Assistant Professor employing multi-course collaborative term projects combining design, analysis, hands-on construction & testing, and synthesis activities (2015)

Where? Outreach program developed for a high-school physics class in Toronto, Canada - ongoing today Student-led structural analysis experimental activities developed and implemented at University of Missouri-Rolla (still used today) Multi-course, collaborative, term project developed at UT Austin and to be used as a unique learning experience

What? Activities have involved targeted experiments or demonstrations to illustrate specific concepts The idea is to link key engineering concepts to real-world by way of quantifiable results. When theory matches real-world it serves a great illustrative example. When they differ, it’s even better! Students typically enjoy hands-on learning activities, particularly those that provide time for trial-and-error testing small-scale theory illustrationlarge-scale real-world response comparison

Prognosis? Written feedback/student surveys have been the primary evaluation tool used Next Step is to transition toward student-led activities: – majority of work performed outside of the classroom – learning done at an individual’s desired pace Hands-on activities are very challenging to implement, even in moderate-sized classes: – time needed for students to ‘play around and try things out’ is high – often already too much course material to cover in a given semester! Am interested in insights regarding the use and development of out-of-class learning activities (e.g., student-led research/design projects, take-home laboratory exercises, web-based modules, etc.). Further, I am also curious to learn about how others are evaluating student learning outcomes