Measurement Science in Graduate Education - Designed for Student Engagement and Learning

This Work in Progress of Innovative Practice describes educational techniques and outcomes of a graduate course in Metrology. Otherwise known as measurement science, this course challenges students to critically consider, evaluate and quantify measurement errors associated with their individual research topics. Originally designed as a lecture/lab course, the six various offering of this course have resulted in a team -based (1), student-led (2) course with industrial support. The instructor gained valuable insight into teaching methods through university instructional excellence programs and applied them to this interdisciplinary graduate course. Metrology concepts must be applied to any scientific endeavor regardless of discipline. This course originated from the need to develop a core graduate curricula appropriate for students in electrical, mechanical and aviation/transportation technologies. To date we have also included similar engineering disciplines, computer graphics, economics and engineering education students. A generic instrumentation system is described from which students specify the needs of their research projects to develop and evaluate their own instrumentation systems. The same approaches are then applied to quantify the system errors. This provides a very student centered environment which students appreciated. The wide variety of disciplines also provides unique opportunities for team development and dynamics. Two class projects were assigned to 1) discipline specific and 2) interdisciplinary teams requiring students to engage in both peer group and collaborative type settings. While sometimes confusing for students, overall results are positive. This paper will share successes and failures in student engagement and learning using combined teaching methods.