Concordia faculty members Joshua Tallman and Gabriela Espinosa, professors of computer science and engineering, respectively, thought it would benefit their students to collaborate on a real-world project to train them in cross-disciplinary teamwork. The result: a half-dozen pirate-themed toys for an imaginary company, each involving 3-D printing, computer coding, and other elements of engineering and computer science education.
“The level of appreciation students had for those in the other group was very palpable to me,” says Espinosa. “They said, ‘Wow, we could do so much more working together than if each class had individually designed this process.’ They couldn’t have come up with as interesting and cool projects as they were able to do.”
The blended learning began with regular combined classes in the first half of the semester so that computer science students and engineering students could get used to the language and goals of the other discipline. Then Tallman and Espinosa created a fictional company — Toys-Arrr-Us — with the goal of producing pirate-themed toys. Students were put into teams of three engineers and one computer scientist and told to create a business plan and then a product.
Among other requirements, each toy had to have mechanical, moving parts, at least one printed part, and an electrical component run by small, credit-card-sized computers which can be programmed to detect input from sensors or buttons, then output an action to a motor or an LCD screen.
“We were teaching them how to take a project from being in your head to having a prototype,” says Espinosa. “They had to work with a whole new set of students, and that made them have to be much more organized and aware of how they were going to approach things.”
One group modified a Nerf gun into the “Pirate Strike” Nerf Musket, shaping and painting it to look like it was made of wood and steel. When loaded with a ramrod, cocked, and fired, darts flew out and a screen displayed graphics with words like “Boom!” and “Bang!”
A second toy was a three-foot-long air-powered cannon on wheels, which propelled balls more than 100 feet with a sprinkler valve at the press of a button. Three groups created types of treasure chests, one of which opened (thanks to an RFID card with actuator in the chest) when a magic wand was waved over it. Another, more of a pirate-themed piggy bank, emitted pirate sounds when money was put in or taken out of it, with a menacing voice asking, “Argh, where be my gold?” The last and most clever treasure chest involved a treasure hunt where three different objects were found and placed together on the chest, causing the chest to open.
But the most attention-grabbing and ambitious product was the bright pink Barrrrr-bie’s Buggy, a pirate-ship-shaped, remote-control buggy equipped with an on-board camera and controlled from a computer.
“There were so many aspects where I had no idea how to do certain things, and it was very helpful to have someone from another major know how to solve a problem we were having,” says then-freshman Jackson Hicks, an engineering major from Vacaville. “If we did this with just engineers, the projects we had would have looked and functioned completely differently. A significantly better product was made than if we didn’t have the different disciplines.”
Still, each team faced significant challenges which caused them to burn the midnight oil seeking solutions.
“They were learning how easy it is to make mistakes when designing something with electronic and physical parts that have to work together,” says Tallman. Part of the learning was how to employ a design process called agile in which designers come up with a series of viable steps that start simple and escalate in complexity with each iteration so that teams learned from mistakes made along the way and incrementally improved the product. “They would get to problems they didn’t know how to solve and required research, trial, and error,” Tallman says. “Teams were often in the lab well past midnight at the end to get components to work together. I could feel the tension in the air. It was character-building to handle adversity and still treat other people with grace.”
One of the biggest surprises for everyone was the critical role played by electrical wiring, which fell in a sort of no-man’s-land between the two specialties.
“I had my students prepared to do the programming, and Gaby had hers prepared to do mechanical work, but nobody thought about the interface between them: wiring and power supply and all that,” says Tallman. “I learned I need to spend more time teaching them about power. We need electrical engineers to join.”
Some groups’ products were overly ambitious, and they had to decide when to throw plan A overboard and come up with a plan B. “Aside from all the technical problems, I saw many groups struggle with the time management and planning side,” says Espinosa.
Alexandra Rodriguez, a sophomore from Yorba Linda studying engineering, was on team Barrrr-bie’s Buggy. She says time management was a foremost challenge, along with the business side of figuring out the cost and retail price of the product. For a final exam, the combined class invited visitors to watch presentations and demonstrations of the products, including aspects of design, manufacturing, and business planning.
“There was absolutely value in this,” Tallman says. “The students worked harder and deeper than usual. It involved teamwork and fun, and a way to apply computer science that most had not considered.”
Espinosa says the fusion allowed the students “to explore something they wouldn’t normally do, possibilities they didn’t have access to before. Before, they were limited by being focused on just their specialty.” For Rodriguez, the reward was a sense of community and group achievement. “You don’t realize until the end how much work you put into it because you’re so focused on finishing and making sure everything is right,” she says. “Seeing what people accomplished was wonderful. We all supported each other. We stayed up late in the lab. The most important thing for me was having that community support.”