Development of a 'Lab-in-a-box' Approach for Large Classes

For many popular engineering courses, first-year students often encounter very large class sizes. Trying to maintain a good student experience that is both conducive to learning and stimulating an interest in the subject can be difficult. Often there is insufficient equipment and limited laboratory space.
The aim of this session is to explain how a new low cost ‘Lab-in-a-box’ course was developed to allow students to go beyond the benefits of a traditional microcontroller/electronics course with the freedom to work from any location. We will also review the structure of the course and how a blended learning approach was used to allow students to work at their own pace. Finally, I will show how this has improved the student experience using feedback and evaluation scores.