Students get a head start on project-based learning with IDPro

IDPro is an acronym for "interdisciplinary projects." Really, the idea is to get involved in these, you know, cool real world projects in an area that aligns with their interests and skill set and get that experience developing their professional skills and building on their technical skills and essentially doing something that mimics the workplace that they'll eventually transition to. We have 16 teams this semester. Anyone can sign up for the course. And once they're here, we can match them to a project that makes sense for what they want to learn, but also what the project needs are. One of the key features of IDPro is it's vertically integrated, meaning students can join a project and stay on it for multiple semesters. And we often find that students benefit from staying on the project for multiple semesters because they can make substantial progress. What we created, it's a new solution to smart homes that ensures the privacy of the user and of the home in general by using local storage. This project has been running for four semesters now, I believe. That's what IDPro does really well. They build the connection with your project and it allows you to foster new ideas and basically develop more and actually do more. We are working with the 3D DD-Arc welding team. What we've heavily focused on is 3D printing conductive traces using aluminum and the DD-Arc welding machine. Have an opportunity to work in a mechanical lab compared to, like, an ECE lab, it kind of allows me to find that connection between the two and be able to use what I've learned here to later possibly implement some of the functions into an electrical project, or even with my major being CPE, one of those projects as well. If you only do work in your major and it's not hands on and it's not authentic and it's not with a team, then by the time you do get to your senior year and do a capstone or a design, you don't have practice. Starting earlier and continuously engaging those skills and building those skills will really make students a lot more prepared. We think that by the time our students are going to get to their senior year that they'll just have superpowers.