written by Nasser M. Juma, Elizabeth Gire, Kristan Corwin, Brian Washburn, and N. Sanjay Rebello

During spring 2010 six students enrolled in an advanced electronics lab worked in pairs on ill-structured capstone projects. They designed electronic circuitry to automate experiments that were completed in a previous advanced physics lab. Some ill-structured features of these capstone projects included open-ended goals, limited guidance from the instructor and the possibility of multiple solution paths. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with both the students and the instructor of the class, before and after the students worked on these ill-structured capstone projects to gauge the participants' expectations of the projects before they began and their views about these projects after they were completed. We report on the pre- and post-project impressions of the students and instructors regarding this ill-structured learning experience.

• Download PERC2010_Juma.pdf - 57kb Adobe PDF Document

Published August 24, 2010
Last Modified May 8, 2013

This file is included in the full-text index.