Journal of STEM Education Volume 13 • Issue 3 May-June 2012 17 Teaching Advanced Vehicle Dynamics Using a Project Based Learning (PBL) Approach Sangram Redkar Arizona State University Abstract This paper presents an interesting teaching experiment carried out at Arizona State University (ASU). The author offered a new course in computational/analytical vehicle dynamics to senior undergraduate students, graduate students, and practic- ing engineers. As the author initially ex- plored the possibility of incorporating a PBL approach in this course, the follow- ing question arose: Can a PBL approach be successfully implemented in a diverse classroom where the individual students may have different skill sets and academic expectations? This paper reports the ef- forts to fnd answers to this important ques- tion via a practical experiment. The author designed and offered a PBL course to a di- verse class of students and measured the outcomes via qualitative and quantitative assessment and triangulation approach. The objective of this PBL course was to present vehicle dynamics theory with Introduction: In the fall of 2008, the graduate students and practicing engineers requested the author, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Technology (ET) to offer a new course in computational vehicle dynamics that would allow them to understand vehicle dynam- ics from a multi-body analytical dynamics point of view and use a commercial dynamics soft- ware (MSC-ADAMS) to solve practical vehicle dynamics problems (MSC Website, 2011). It is noted that MSC is the software company that has developed the multi-body dynamics simula- tion software ADAMS and various modules like ADAMS-View, ADAMS-Car, etc. This course was offered as a graduate/senior undergradu- ate course and had a unique class composition. Forty percent of the students had 10 years or more of industrial experience, 20 percent of the students had 20 years or more of industrial ex- practical applications using a commer- cial dynamics simulation software (MSC- ADAMS). The class composition for this course was quite diverse. Some students had more than 20 years of industrial expe- rience and some undergraduate students had little or no industrial experience. In order to help students meet their learn- ing goals, the author (instructor) adopted an integrated PBL approach. The author tuned PBL methodology for a diverse classroom and helped students meet their educational goals. In the PBL approach used here, the students were presented with theory con- cepts and along with in-class tutorials, where the instructor discussed each step in detail. Students were then assigned home-works that strengthened the under- standing of the concepts, and fnally, were asked to work on a real life project that forced them to ‘think outside the box’. The emphasis during the initial stages of the learning process was to make students aware of the capabilities and limitations of software used to solve vehicle dynamics problems. This led to the development of an ‘engineering-sense,’ or an ability to make sense of the results obtained using the software. In this paper, we review this ‘under- stand-crawl-walk-run’ PBL approach ad- opted for this course and present some of the challenges faced by the author. We evaluate this PBL pedagogy, qualitatively and quantitatively and discuss the results of student survey, assessment, student learning objectives and course evalua- tions. We also present evidence that the PBL is an effective approach for teaching a diverse class where students have dif- ferent backgrounds, age, experience, and academic expectations. perience, 30 percent of the graduate students had less than two years of experience, and 10percent of the senior undergraduate students were interested in pursuing careers in automo- tive engineering. Even though the project-based teaching is a very popular approach in STEM education, this approach needs to be implemented slightly differently when the student population ranges from senior executives with 20 years or more of experience to senior undergraduate students with little to no practical experience (Ramsden, 2002; Blumenfeld, 1991; DeFillippi, 2001; Hme- lo-Silver, 2004). A lot of “short term” Continuing Education Programs (CEP), industry training courses, and certifcation classes use similar teaching methodology. However, the differ- ence between these “short term” CEPs and one semester university courses is that the “short term” programs use a more focused approach and have very specifc learning objectives. On