A central focus of this Smart Materials and Sensors Class will be collaborative activities. Multidisciplinary collaboration has become a hallmark of effective research and practice in science and technology. With technological knowledge expanding at an exponential rate, it is impossible for one individual to be an expert on all aspects of any given engineering endeavor, thus making collaboration a fundamental part of being an effective engineer, and making collaboration and communication skills some of the most valuable tools an engineer brings to bear on a given problem. In this class the team projects have been designed carefully to be consistent with contemporary educational research on team and group learning. Moreover, a special effort has been made to create a team based student-centered approach which mirrors, as much as possible, collaboration in the "real world" of the engineering researcher and practitioner.