Using low-cost technology and relevant challenges to encourage and retain engineering students

The engineering grand challenges facing the world today require innovation in engineering to solve tomorrow´s greatest problems. Although we are surrounded by the products of engineering in our everyday lives, students often do not understand the importance of the engineering profession. Research strongly connects engineering to mathematics and science skills but does not associate engineering with problem solving, creativity, or the positive impacts on the world. It is disturbing to see how few young students understand the relevance and excitement of engineering. In the United States, there is a danger of having an insufficient supply of creative, young innovators for the future. It is important to give the next generation of engineers the ability to tinker, explore, and experiment with relevant world topics, such as renewable energy, infrastructure, improved transportation, and medical care. By combining the knowledge and tools of today, students can understand the importance and constraints of the problem and find an engineering solution. Today, educators face limitations in delivering these relevant challenges to students in an affordable and accessible manner. Educators want to provide a hands-on learning experience to empower students while improving the comprehension of fundamental concepts. Traditional tools and techniques are either too expensive for a school to afford or the size makes accessibility to the system a challenge. In this paper, we demonstrate how to give students the ability to gain experience with the relevant challenges using graphical system design and student-owned instrumentation hardware. Through systems like the NI myDAQ miniGrid, students can understand the concepts of renewable energy and sustainability and reinforce topics like solar power and power distribution with systems that fit into the palm of their hand and cost less than $99 USD. The low-cost systems are currently in high schools and universities for the spring 2012 semes- er. We will evaluate how these systems provide an experience for students to understand the importance of engineering.