Lily Johnson, Alexandra Zhang Jiang
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The IEEE Student Branch from the University of California, Irvine (IEEE@UCI) launched the Open Project Space (OPS) program to provide engineering students with the opportunity to practice valuable skills and theories learned in the classroom.
OPS is a year-long extracurricular program founded at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2010 by Leo Szeto. Through lectures, workshops, and projects, OPS aims to create an interactive environment where students learn fundamental embedded systems concepts, develop troubleshooting techniques, compare communication protocols, and design their first printed circuit board (PCB).
With the help of IEEE at UCLA, the program was first piloted by John Yu and Samuel Deans at UCI in fall 2020, trialing four projects with 30 students. As per pandemic restrictions, the necessary hardware was shipped, and lectures were given over Zoom. However, participation declined, and it was arduous to provide hardware troubleshooting help due to the virtual format. For example, even though a Discord channel was created for OPS members, it was rarely used, and students preferred sending an e-mail. Nonetheless, the pilot program raised expectations for the full in-person version of OPS at UCI: 20 out of 30 members completed the program, and a couple students continued their journey in IEEE as officers.
The next iteration, headed by officers Lily Johnson and Alexandra Zhang Jiang, was offered to 60 students during the 2021–2022 academic year. Since the program doubled its capacity, IEEE@UCI also doubled efforts to reach out to students by advertising at the Anteater Involvement Fair at the beginning of the year, sending invitations through the engineering newsletter, and promoting in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) classes. More than 200 students applied, exceeding expectations, and proving the demand for the program within UCI.
The new OPS version from UCI (https://ieee.ics.uci.edu/ops.html) diverges from UCLA’s template program (https://openproject.space/projects/) to adjust to the tool sets of UCI students and the school’s branding.
One of IEEE@UCI’s biggest limitations is the small workspace area, so, unlike UCLA’s method of checking projects in person or the pilot program’s e-mail submissions, the year-long version at UCI hosted a Canvas page to handle collecting and grading student projects. The Canvas page also provided a platform for resources and recorded lectures. Additionally, the order of content was changed to align with the road map of EECS classes, lecture slides were edited for better readability, and a simple but professional theme was designed.
The first meeting of the year kicked off with a lecture about electrical engineering basics, followed by a hands-on workshop where students used the IEEE lab’s soldering irons (Fig. 1) to complete the first simple project of soldering an LED and a resistor to a perf board.
Fig 1 Alexandra Zhang Jiang leading the first soldering workshop of the year.
Fig 2 OPS students soldering the PCBs that they designed for the RC car project.
Lectures and projects ranged from learning the basics, such as the difference between a cathode and anode, to using microcontrollers to implement more complex projects, like an infrared distance sensor. One of the favorites among the students was the iPoduino, where students programmed an Arduino to make a buzzer play different songs of their choosing. The spring term ended with the capstone project of a remote-control (RC) car, consisting of an Arduino car and a custom remote PCB integrating an inertial measurement unit. Students looked forward to designing their first PCB and holistically implementing the topics and tools they learned from previous projects (Fig. 2).
As the program came to a close, students had much positive feedback. Third-year and transfer students, who had two years of virtual classes, were delighted to finally apply topics learned in the classroom through hands-on projects. First- and second-year students were excited to get a head start on their engineering path. One student commented, “I thought this was a great experience to have, and I learned some topics here . . . that were hard to understand in an actual UCI lecture!” Overall, students found the program enriching and complementary to their classes as well as inspiring for personal projects. Another student stated, “Of all the projects I’ve participated [in], no matter the difficulty, I always came out of it feeling I achieved and learned something new and valuable. . . .” No matter the difficulty of the projects, students were incentivized to make mistakes and ask questions, creating a stress-free learning environment. The program functioned purely as an extracurricular, not affecting their grade point average if they were unable to complete projects.
However, many challenges and critiques came with executing the program at full scale for the first time. Toward the middle of the second quarter, participation declined. This was attributed to the rapid increase in difficulty toward the end of the program, particularly with the projects exploring communication protocols through a red light/green light game between Arduinos. Many students agreed with this feedback: “The radio version of red light/green light gave me a lot of issues that I [couldn’t] really understand compared to those from previous projects.” The nRF24 radio modules and the associated library were difficult to use and required extensive debugging. This level of debugging was discouraging and time-consuming for students who were newly introduced to these topics. The OPS leads also found that managing the entire program was too much for two people and were not always able to address student inquiries promptly due to the sheer volume of requests for help.
For the 2022–2023 year, OPS has enrolled 100 students. The program’s curriculum and projects have been revamped extensively to tackle student feedback. To address the difficulty spike, easier projects, such as debugging a faulty perf board circuit, were removed, and more substantial, intermediate projects were added in the middle of the program where students felt that the difficulty increased too quickly. One of the new projects includes building an H-bridge circuit with p-channel and n-channel transistors to drive a dc motor with an Arduino. Additionally, the red light/green light series was replaced with a weather station project to align with embedded systems interests. Students will utilize the same communication protocols and microcontrollers used in red light/green light, but, unlike red light/green light, which relies on software algorithms, the weather station will focus on teaching how to use electronics components, such as temperature and humidity sensors, and an LCD screen.
Under the new OPS leads, the leadership team has expanded to include OPS technicians, who will assist with buying and distributing parts, organizing lab hours, and helping students with questions and debugging (Fig. 3).
Fig 3 Students received their hardware kits during the first 2022Ð2023 OPS meeting.
We are excited to start the third iteration of OPS! IEEE@UCI would like to extend a huge thank you to Leo Szeto, founder of the OPS program at UCLA; Ryeder Geyer, IEEE at UCLA’s external officer; and IEEE at UCLA liaisons as well as any others who had a part in making this program a success.
Lily Johnson (lilyaj@uci.edu) is the president of the IEEE Student Branch at the University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697 USA.
Alexandra Zhang Jiang (azhangji@uci.edu) is the vice president of the IEEE Student Branch at the University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697 USA.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPOT.2023.3241448