Track: Engineering Education

Abstract

After a successful launch and deployment of the first Paraguayan satellite, a CubeSat style, the GuaraniSat, public attention on how the New Space era is reaching this country was evidenced. This historical event helped inspire students to be involved in STEM. This was the motivation to design a workshop on nanosatellite system integration. With this, we expected improvements in teaching engineering fundamentals to college students. Space-related educational programs have grown in popularity as a motivating way to teach STEM subjects. Past CanSat (Can-Satellite) training program for teachers was proven to be effective in motivating students into STEM. In this work, a similar teaching approach was conducted. This time, a CubeSat-style prototype for educational purposes was used. Students were trained under this platform on subsystem integration and operations. This workshop was intended to teach engineering fundamentals such as sensor principles, signal conditioning systems, data acquisition fundamentals, and graphical user interface theory to a senior-level engineering student. This study aims to measure students learning performance as they learn on each satellite subsystem working principles and how all of this is integrated and operated from a friendly graphical user interface. Indicators such as the following will be used to assess the impact on learning effectiveness: Experimentation and Iteration, Trial and Debugging, Reusing and Remixing, Abstraction and Modularization and will be scored as low, medium, or high. In addition, problem-solving abilities based on the Polya method will be taken into account. The process is categorized into problem comprehension, plan set up, plan execution, and obtained solution analysis. All evaluation procedures are based on engineering design competencies.

Keywords
Usability, Didactic Module Prototype, CubeSat, STEAM Education.