Due to the resources required to support student labs, experiments are rarely designed with sufficient time for students to explore concepts on their own. Nor is the laboratory equipment available to students outside of proscribed hours because it is needed for too many classes, is too hard to use without supervision, and is, in some cases, too fragile and easily damaged. However, the continued revolution in electronic miniaturization is making possible portable, low-cost, robust experimental platforms that allow for ubiquitous hands-on experiences for students anywhere and anytime - integrated with lectures in the classroom on campus or online, as assignments in take-home project, or when students want to try out their own ideas. Ubiquitous hands-on experiments enable a new pedagogical model that promotes a more complete integration of theory, design, and practice.
The Mobile Hands-On STEM (MOHS) project is a collaboration among Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, University of Albany, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Howard University, and Morgan State University. The project is developing standardized assessment tools for the mobile hands-on-learning experiences in order to measure student learning as well as its ease of adoption by instructors. The project is building a community of practice composed of developers, users, industry partners, and commercial device suppliers in order to share information across a large, diverse collection of schools and across a diverse set of portable experimental platforms. Building on this community of practice, the project is holding workshops for both instructors who currently use mobile hands-on education and for new instructors to introduce them to mobile hands-on learning. This proactive dissemination strategy gives the project insight into the barriers to adoption and helps form the next steps toward wide dissemination.
