When you’re in charge of the education path of engineering students, you’re responsible for their theoretical and practical knowledge. While setting a solid foundation with the basic principles, theories, concepts, and calculations is essential, engineering students need more than this. A practical application of their skills is crucial for helping them gain confidence and enabling them to become engineering professionals.
Embedded system projects are great for engineering students, as they perfectly combine theory and practice, software and hardware. If you want to create engaging embedded system projects for future engineers, this guide will teach you how. Just keep reading!
The Benefits of Embedded System Projects
Let’s kick things off with a reminder of why exactly these embedded system projects are so beneficial for engineering students. How do these contribute to their professional development, and what specific benefits can we see with every project?
Boosts Creativity
Students need to get creative to develop ideas and solutions for their projects. They need to try and be innovative and smart about what they’ll be working on and what the final result should be. Creativity is a skill they need for other academic tasks, like writing research papers and essays. If this is something you struggle with, you can buy custom essays online.
Enhances Problem-Solving
The next important benefit of these projects is that students practice their problem-solving skills. They need to think about how to approach the assignment, make the right steps, implement the systems, and be critical of their work every step of the way.
Improved Learning Experience
Students who participate in embedded system projects have an enhanced learning experience. From ideation to realization, they are using all their intellectual resources, learning about technology and tools, utilizing their skills, strengthening their skills, and enjoying the entire experience more. Without such a valuable experience, students would have less confidence and feel lost after graduation.
Provides Practical Experience
The final important benefit of being engaged in an embedded system project is that it gives students a chance to work on hands-on projects instead of just reading about them or talking hypothetically. This increases the retention of information in students to 75%. The more they practice, the better and more confident they’ll be in their future work.
How to Create Engaging Embedded System Projects?
Now that we understand the value of embedded system projects let’s take a look at the process of creating them for engineering students. Here are the essential steps.
Brainstorming
Help the students understand your project’s goal by ensuring you underline what knowledge and skills from the class you expect them to use. Then, allow them to brainstorm ideas for the project and help them choose the best one for achieving the learning goals.
Resources
Help the students prepare for the project before they start working on it. Give them resources to learn from and tell them what aspects of the project to pay attention to to finalize it successfully.
Choose the Microcontroller & Programming Language
Students will need your help in making the best choice of microcontroller and selecting the programming language for their project. Depending on their skill level, help them choose what’s best for their idea and their chosen field.
You can provide additional resources for these specific choices and encourage a bit more theoretical preparation.
Create a Project Schedule
Next on the agenda for you and your students is breaking the project down into smaller, manageable steps. This is to teach them project planning and organizing, which is crucial for its success.Together, make a project plan or outline that covers the phases of the project and smaller tasks within each phase.
Prototype
Instruct students to start with a prototype of the project to see how it goes. Then, allow them to develop it further.
Testing
Explain the importance of the testing phase and help students remove any errors and bugs that their system contains.
Final Thoughts
After your students go through the entire process of creating an embedded system project, you’ll see just how much they’ve learned. Make sure you wrap it up with proper feedback on your side, as well as peer reviews and comments.
An engaging embedded system project will benefit you as the teacher and your engineering students on their way to becoming professionals.
