Many studies have found active learning, either in the form of in-class exercises or projects, to be superior to traditional lectures. However, these forms of hands-on learning do not always lead students to reach the higher order thinking skills associated with the highest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation). Assignments that expect students to follow a prescribed approach to reach a well-defined solution contribute to a lack of higher order thinking at the college level. Professional engineers often face complex and ambiguous problems that require design decisions for which there is no straightforward answer. To strengthen the higher order thinking skills demanded by such problems, we developed a project in a semester-long mechatronics course in which students must evaluate two automatic control methodologies without being given explicit performance criteria or experimental procedures. Specifically, the project involves determining the superior control method for leader-follower behavior, where a ground vehicle autonomously follows a lead vehicle. Laboratory exercises throughout the semester expose students to the skills required for the project, including using sensors and actuators, programming proportional-integral-derivative (PID) and fuzzy controllers, and applying computer vision to detect an object signature. In the final course project, students go beyond implementing individual controllers and create their own evaluation criteria and experiments to make a design decision between PID and fuzzy control. We implemented this approach over three semesters and found that students value working on a real-world, open-ended problem, develop creative performance criteria and evaluation methods that demonstrate higher order thinking, and discover that comparative studies are nontrivial due to the many factors influencing performance.

翻译：多项研究表明，以课堂练习或项目形式开展的主动学习优于传统讲授式教学。然而，这类实践性学习并不总能引导学生达到布鲁姆分类学最高层级（分析、综合与评价）所对应的高阶思维能力。要求学生遵循既定方法获得明确解决方案的作业形式，是导致高等教育阶段高阶思维缺失的原因之一。专业工程师常面临复杂且定义模糊的问题，需要进行没有标准答案的设计决策。为强化此类问题所需的高阶思维能力，我们在为期一学期的机电一体化课程中设计了一个项目：学生在未获得明确性能指标或实验流程的情况下，必须对两种自动控制方法进行评估。具体而言，该项目要求确定地面车辆自主跟随引导车辆的领航-跟随行为中更优的控制方法。贯穿学期的实验练习使学生掌握项目所需技能，包括传感器与执行器使用、比例-积分-微分（PID）与模糊控制器编程，以及应用计算机视觉进行目标特征识别。在最终课程项目中，学生不仅需要实现独立控制器，还需自主创建评估标准与实验方案，从而在PID控制与模糊控制间作出设计决策。我们通过三个学期的教学实践发现：学生重视解决现实世界中开放式问题的过程；能制定体现高阶思维的创新性性能标准与评估方法；并认识到由于影响性能的因素众多，比较性研究具有实质性的学术挑战。