2021 Results from the UH Program to Teach Undergraduates to Build Spacecraft

The Undergraduate Student Instrumentation Project (USIP) was a NASA program to engage undergraduate students in rigorous scientific research, for the purposes of innovation and developing the next generation of professionals in space research. The program is student led and executed from initial ideation of research objectives to the design and deployment of scientific payloads. The University of Houston was selected twice to participate in the USIP programs. The first program (USIP_UH I) ran from 2013 to 2016. USIP_UH II ran from 2016 to 2019. USIP_UH I (USIP_UH II) at the University of Houston was composed of eight (seven) research teams developing six (seven), distinct, balloon-based scientific instruments. This project was a for-credit course two years in duration. The program has been so successful in terms of improved student career outcomes the University has decided to continue the project with purely local funding. The pandemic has produced a substantial instructional challenge since this project is a lab class! The virtual classroom that we designed to meet this need provides tools for ongoing collaboration, revisions, storage, project planning, systems engineering, and a tool to request immediate feedback from faculty and fellow researchers. Additionally, the classroom provides an ongoing place to store data from different students for many years. New students can use this continuity in a consistent and secure way. We also provided tools for conferencing and communication. A combination of several tools were selected and customized to meet this need. These tools include Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Git, Groupme, and Zoom. This paper will report on the 2020-2021 experience.