EXPERIENCES FROM A MULTI-CULTURAL DESIGN, BUILD, TEST PROJECT Thomas Gustafsson School of Engineering, Jönköping University Adam Lagerberg School of Engineering, Jönköping University 5 th International CDIO Conference, 7-9 June 2009, Singapore

Outline DBT Project Context DBT Project Task Experiences round one and adaptations for round two Experiences round two Conclusions 3

DBT Context 2 year Master’s program in embedded systems Prerequisites include bachelor degree in Electrical engineering No room for a separate DBT project in the curriculum DBT project given in the context of laboratory work of two parallel 10-week courses Software engineering: Software project management Mechatronics: Control theory and Hardware 4

DBT Context, continued 100 % foreign students (middle East, Africa, east Asia, Europe, north America) Often not used to work in groups or on open problems Students took a course in Multicultural communication The DBT project has been given two times 5

Course-related goals Work in a (multicultural) project group Practice project model Technical goals Microprocessor based control system for hanging or inverted pendulum Graphical user interface for pendulum DBT Task

Model driven development approach

DBT Task, continued Students were randomly divided into groups Each group should deliver some artifacts: Project documents, e.g., software requirements specification Presentations The end product 8

Grading Group grade = weighted average of Project documents Presentations/demonstrations Meetings Individual grade = weighted average of Fellow assessment average Supervisor adjustment Final project (individual) grade Group members’ average grade adjusted to the group’s grade. Course grading Weighted average of Project and Written Examination 9

Experiences Round One Students have problems in Dividing a problem into subproblems Working independently on subproblems Move on even if stuck on some part of the problem The amount of documentation seemed to, partly, hinder the students to focus on the problem solving Some students thought it was awkward to do peer student assessment 10 Project management document Software requirements specification Software architecture Software design Software test specification Software test report Software requirements tracing document Hand-over documentation

Adaptations for Second Round Reduced amount of documentation required from each group Control free hanging pendulum instead of inverted pendulum Early presentation, which could force the student groups to work more iteratively Each group had to include the risk ’student is not doing allocated task’ 11

Experiences from Second Round Many students didn’t work independently It seems the students cannot divide the problem into subproblems and then work on these problems independently One effect was that the groups got stuck in developing a plant model and running experiments in Matlab/Simulink, even though their time plans had independent branches Reducing the documentation gave the effect that students didn’t see the benefits of working systematically – The task too ’simple’/uncomplex?? 12

Conclusions Multicultural aspects: Project execution could have been better When is a DBT project succesful? Course-related goals Work in a (multicultural) project group – got the experience Practice project model – got the experience, often good results Technical goals Microprocessor based control system for hanging or inverted pendulum – got the training, mostly failed results Graphical user interface for pendulum – got the training, mostly success Motivate students to work hard and independently – failed (partly) 13

Questions?

Equipment NI I/O board FPGA reading angle sensor and position sensor FPGA communicates sensor values to MCU using SPI MCU communicates motor value using SPI MCU should send sensor values on serial comm. port to PC 15