Conference Session

Design in the ECE Curriculum

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Hassan El-Kishky, The University of Texas-Tyler; Ralph Hippenstiel, The University of Texas-Tyler

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

the design and prototype realization ofcircuits and systems they always wanted to build and the place for hands-on experience Page 12.930.3throughout their freshman year. The Hobby Shop will be an integral part of the freshman yearcourses, namely, ENGR 1200-Engineering Methods, and EENG 1201-Electrical Engineering I.The size and level of sophistication of the Hobby Shop projects are usually determined by theavailable budget and time. Robotic bugs and vehicles with track and obstacle sensors were themost common choice of students enrolling in the Hobby Shop. Other interesting projects thatstudents chose

Conference Session

New Trends in ECE Education I

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ismail Jouny, Lafayette College

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

outsourcing of ECE expertise. The intent is to offer suggestions on howto revise the ECE curriculum to; 1) help future graduating ECE engineers work in aglobal environment, and 2) strengthen areas of ECE that are not likely to be outsourced,and to minimize focus of areas of the ECE discipline that are most likely to beoutsourced. These recommendations will in no way weaken the fundamental requirementfor understanding basic ECE principles, but are merely an attempt to structure the ECEcurriculum to be more resilient to outsourcing, so that ECE graduates in the United Stateshave expertise that are not easily outsourced and can compete in a global environment.Research of what’s being currently outsourced clearly identifies the need for USengineering

Conference Session

Optical and Wireless Communication Systems

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Robert Caverly, Villanova University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

circuit design that provides a smooth entry point either to a career path or future graduate work in this area; and • details of a development effort into the creation of an extensive integrated series of concept modules in RF circuit design that will be made available to the general academic community in support of curriculum development areas at other universities.Undergraduate Curriculum Track in RF and Microwave Engineering The overall curriculum track (Figure 1) begins with the required EngineeringElectromagnetics course in the junior year. This course builds upon the static electromagneticscourse the students take in the freshman/sophomore year and emphasizes dynamicelectromagnetics and wave theory and

Conference Session

New Trends in ECE Education I

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ronny Veljanovski, Victoria University; Alex Stojcevski, Victoria University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

of social, political and / or organizationalcontexts in the engineering discipline. These aspects are an integral part of the problems in theelectrical engineering units of study. By taking on and playing the persona of a role, learnerswere led to reflect on the material from the perspective of personal experience and identity. Thisdeep reflection was enhanced by being able to act out possibilities in a safe and collaborativeenvironment. In addition, learners were absorbed in situations and contexts that highlight thelearning outcomes and objectives of the engineering units of study.The project was carried out over two semesters in 2006 and was evaluated by student feedbackquestionnaires to determine whether the role playing platform had

Conference Session

Design in the ECE Curriculum

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Guoping Wang, Indiana University-Purdue University-Fort Wayne (Eng)

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

Department of Engineering, Indiana University Purdue University Fort WayneAbstract In this paper, the work-in-progress project which seeks the adaptation andimplementation of one undergraduate education’s most promising and readily adoptableinstructional technique in recent years - Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT), in an electrical andcomputer engineering course — Digital Systems Design is presented. JiTT involves web-basedwarm-up assignments which students are required to complete and submit before class. Students’responses to these assignments are then reviewed by the instructor who makes appropriateadjustments in the teaching based on student’s understanding and concerns. The warm-upassignments, combined with classroom teaching, will lead

Conference Session

Design in the ECE Curriculum

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Yi Cheng, California State Polytechnic University-Pomona; Kathleen Hayden, California State Polytechnic University-Pomona; Zekeriya Aliyazicioglu, California State Polytechnic University-Pomona

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

ComputerEngineering in fall, 2003. This Computer Engineering program offers a balancedcurriculum in both software and hardware; there are seven quarter courses in digitalhardware, and seven courses in software. These courses are taught in a traditional way;the interaction and trade-off between hardware and software design is hardly covered inany computer engineering courses. The faculty members have been trying for severalyears to integrate hardware with software courses.The ECE faculty members have been working with the managers and engineers of theDepartment Industrial Advisory Council to update our curriculum. With theirencouragement, we started to teach hardware-design language and digital design based onField Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) in our

Conference Session

Design in the ECE Curriculum

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Lisa Huettel, Duke University; Kip Coonley, Duke University; Michael Gustafson, Duke University; Jungsang Kim, Duke University; Gary Ybarra, Duke University; Leslie Collins, Duke University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

undergraduate engineering education, power electronics, plasma physics, and thin-films. He received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Dartmouth College.Michael Gustafson, Duke University MICHAEL R. GUSTAFSON II, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. His research interests include linear and non-linear control systems as well as curriculum development. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Duke University.Jungsang Kim, Duke University JUNGSANG KIM, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. His research interests include

Conference Session

Design in the ECE Curriculum

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Christine Co, Oklahoma State University; Bear Turner, Oklahoma State University; Alan Cheville, Oklahoma State University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

some support is given to students in theform of specifications, deadlines, and an overall block diagram of the larger system, but thedesign projects are performed independently by students. In the cognitive apprentice model, thesecond project represents independent work that is critiqued by the expert. In the third project,teams must integrate all the subsystems designed in the second project into a working system.Following the cognitive apprentice approach the faculty takes a “hands-off” attitude and studentteams are given a large amount of freedom in design decisions.The organization of projects and student teams is shown in Figure 1. Although it is wellestablished that team performance improves with time 2, the pre-capstone course

Conference Session

Design in the ECE Curriculum

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Douglas Williams, Georgia Institute of Technology; Robert Butera, Georgia Institute of Technology; Selcuk Uluagac, Georgia Institute of Technology; Matthew Clark, Georgia Institute of Technology; Andy Deck, National Instruments; Michael Torba, National Instruments; Steven Trahan, National Instruments

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

AC 2007-1791: COOPERATIVE UNIVERSITY/INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT OF AFRESHMAN ‘INTRODUCTION TO ECE DESIGN’ COURSEDouglas Williams, Georgia Institute of Technology Douglas Williams is Professor and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Affairs in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech.Robert Butera, Georgia Institute of Technology Robert Butera is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Chair of the Interdisciplinary Bioengineering Graduate Program at Georgia Tech.Selcuk Uluagac, Georgia Institute of Technology Selcuk Uluagac is a Ph.D. student in Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.Matthew Clark, Georgia Institute of Technology

Conference Session

Design in the ECE Curriculum

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Wagdy Mahmoud, University of the District of Columbia

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

differential equations of a system, to find the a system’sresponse to a particular input, to model sampled-data systems, to convert continuous-timesystems to discrete-time systems and vice versa, and to design proportional, integral, andderivative (PID) controller for a system and use it to obtain a desired response. Student also usebuilt-in functions, the response analysis GUI (the LTI viewer), and the interactive design tools ofthe Control System toolbox to analyze the response of a controlled system to pulse, step, andarbitrary inputs, and to view the root locus and the Bode plot of a system.In the introduction to computer-aided designs class and laboratory (ECE 480/483) students learna) the hardware description language (VHDL) and use it

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education I

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Haley Haywood, Oklahoma State University; Forrest Austin, Oklahoma State University; Seth Williams, Oklahoma State University; Cameron Musgrove, Oklahoma State University; Charles Bunting, Oklahoma State University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECEN) mayhave a wealth of knowledge after completing their required courses, but will graduates havedeveloped the skills needed to be an engineer? To create a more effective, engaged, and efficientcurriculum, the ECEN department is implementing program change from a primarily knowledge-based paradigm (acquiring a set of concepts) to being development-based (emphasizing students’development). In a development-based program faculty redefine their roles from lecturers tomentors and scholars, guiding academic development towards complex problem solving tied toreal world problems. Six of OSU’s ECEN faculty have come together to adapt active learningmethods to ten strategic courses within the curriculum

Conference Session

ECE Pedagogy and Assessment

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

David Braun, California Polytechnic State University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

AC 2007-922: WEB-BASED DESIGN AND ANALYSIS PROJECTS FOR A JUNIORLEVEL INTEGRATED CIRCUITS COURSEDavid Braun, California Polytechnic State University David Braun is a Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. He worked at Philips Research Labs in Eindhoven, the Netherlands from 1992 to 1996, after completing the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at U.C. Santa Barbara. Please see www.ee.calpoly.edu/~dbraun/ for information about his courses, teaching interests, and research. Page 12.1599.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007 Web Based Design

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education II

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Shonda Bernadin, Georgia Southern University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

. Page 12.85.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007 A Paradigm for Assessing Student Learning in an Introductory Digital Signal Processing CourseAbstractThis paper presents research on designing and incorporating assessment measures for evaluatingstudent learning in an introductory digital signal-processing (DSP) course. We teach Electricaland Computer Engineering (ECE) students the first two years of their engineering curriculum inan engineering studies transfer program. One of their required courses is an introductory DSPcourse, which our students take during the second-year of their program. Due to themathematical intensity of this course, traditional ECE programs offer the first signal

Conference Session

ECE Pedagogy and Assessment

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Fadi Kurdahi, University of California, Irvine; Judy Shoemaker, University of California, Irvine; John LaRue, University of California-Irvine

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007 Design and Implementation of a Program Outcome Assessment Process for an ABET-accredited Computer Engineering ProgramAbstractThis paper describes the design and implementation of a program outcomes assessment processfor the Computer Engineering Program at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering, theUniversity of California, Irvine. The purpose of the assessment process is to collect and analyzeinformation on student performance in order to improve student learning and the effectiveness ofthe curriculum, and to meet the ABET accreditation requirements. In the last two years we haveadopted two new direct measures of program outcomes which are

Conference Session

New Trends in ECE Education II

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Min-Sung Koh, Eastern Washington University; Esteban Rodriguez-Marek, Eastern Washington University; Claudio Talarico, Eastern Washington University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

pedagogical observation from the projects, further curriculum revision under developmentare explained in Section 3, namely, to tie Matlab programming skills with hardwareimplementation in DSP and/or FPGA boards. 2. GUI system designs using MatlabDigital signal processing is taught as a senior-level, 4-hour/week lecture, 2-hour/week laboratoryclass. The lab culminated in an intensive team-oriented class project. The projects wereproposed by the students to the instructor, who revised the project for appropriate content and sizeprior to approval. All specifications were chosen by students themselves, save for one criterion:the inclusion of a Matlab-based GUI system. Most of the students are seniors in EE, and morethan 60% of them had prior

Conference Session

New Trends in ECE Education I

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Susan Lord, University of San Diego

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

have access to such resources.Writing has been effectively integrated into many senior design courses. Nevertheless, students’skills would be further developed if writing were included throughout the undergraduateengineering curriculum. But how can electrical engineering faculty do this? Research reportedin the literature describes constructivist and knowledge transformation frameworks of howwriting helps build knowledge in the sciences. Building on these theories, successful writingexperiences in engineering are “writing to communicate” rather than “writing to learn”. Thispaper highlights several key aspects of integrating effective “writing to communicate”experience into undergraduate electrical engineering courses by an engineering

Conference Session

ECE Poster Session

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Doug Sterk, Virginia Tech; Tim Thacker, Virginia Tech; Elizabeth Tranter, Virginia Tech; Richard Goff, Virginia Tech; Janis Terpenny, Virginia Tech

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

unique in their integration intothe Center’s diversity strategic plan, which specifies the goals, commitments, and results for eachpartner campus in the areas of student recruitment and undergraduate program development.Through the CPES Education Program, REU and LSAMP REU participants have theopportunity to apply for short-term travel scholarships, which enable their continuedparticipation in Center-related research during the academic year. This has proved an effectivemechanism for continued engagement of undergraduates in Center programs, and occasionally,for integration of summer research into the student’s undergraduate capstone design project(s).The Center’s consortium format also allows participants from partner universities to establish

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education I

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

David Chang, USMA; Grant Jacoby, USMA; Lisa Shay, U.S. Military Academy

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

AC 2007-2208: PREPARING AND ADVISING A FAST-TRACK EDUCATION INROBOTICSDavid Chang, USMA Major David J. Chang is an Assistant Professor at the US Military Academy, West Point, NY. His recent research has been on Coordinated & Sensing Robotics, Distributed & Autonomous Control Systems, and Network Vulnerability & Flexibility. Chang received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University and an M.S.E. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Contact him at david.chang@usma.eduGrant Jacoby, USMA Lieutenant Colonel Grant A. Jacoby is a Senior Research Scientist and Assistant Professor at the US Military Academy, West Point, NY

Conference Session

ECE Pedagogy and Assessment

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Tokunbo Ogunfunmi, Santa Clara University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

assessment of the studentlearning outcomes have been done using both a test prepared by the school and a standard testknown as the SSCI.The Signals and Systems Concept Inventory (SSCI) [2-3] is a set of multiple-choice questionsthat measures students’ understanding of fundamental concepts such as signal transformations,linearity, time-invariance, transforms, convolution, etc. There are two versions of the SSCI forLinear Systems. One deals with Continuous-Time (CT) systems and the other deals withDiscrete-Time (DT) systems.The paper is divided into six sections. In Section 2, we describe our Electrical Engineeringundergraduate curriculum. In Section 3, we describe the Linear Systems course contents. InSection 4, we discuss an assessment test used

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education I

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Dick Blandford, University of Evansville; Deborah Hwang, University of Evansville

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

not combined intoa single department that shared some courses, it is likely that the first programming courses incomputer science would use Java.Another major change in the computer science curriculum consists of the way in which thetechnical electives are structured and chosen. Upper level electives in the computer scienceprogram are structured such that they are open to both computer science students and tocomputer engineering students. This means that in general, the only prerequisite for thesecourses is the data structures course. In terms of which courses are offered, for example, itmeans that an advanced version of object oriented programming will probably not be offeredunless there is great enrollment in computer science since there is

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education I

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Alka Harriger, Purdue University; Kyle Lutes, Purdue University; Jack Purdum, Purdue University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

Jack Purdum is currently an assistant professor in the Computer Technology department at Purdue University. He is the author of 14 programming texts and has research interests in methods in computer language education, image processing, and mobile computing. Dr. Purdum was also the CEO of a company that produced compilers, editor, assemblers, linkers, and other programming tools as well as a statistics package. Page 12.472.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007 Designing curricula to teach concepts and increase employabilityAbstractThe software development curriculum in the Computer

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education II

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Angel Martinez, Kansas State University; Steve Warren, Kansas State University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

asa $100 kit. The kit includes supervisory software written in Visual Basic that allows students tocommunicate with the board via the left and right channels of the Line-In port on a computersound card. Generally speaking, the functionality and resources on this board are restricted whenone considers broad use in an EE curriculum. For example, if a professor were to assign studentsthe task of building an audio filter comprised of a cascade of active filters, the breadboard wouldnot provide enough space. Additionally, for circuit theory and signals & systems courses, EEstudents would need access to an array of input waveforms in addition to audio, includingperiodic sine, square, and triangle waveforms. Because of the importance that modern

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education III

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Brian Otis, University of Washington; Linda Whang, University of Washington

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

engineers who received instruction in informationaccess and use as undergraduates were able to identify more information resources available tothem and had a higher opinion of formal sources of information, such as libraries, than did Page 12.577.3respondents who did not receive library instruction as an undergraduate.12 More recently,Okudan and Osif studied the effect of including library instruction in the curriculum of anengineering design course at Penn State University and found that the “[a]ddition of a guidedresearch intervention to the engineering design teaching improves the design performance inengineering teams.”13In this study, we

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education II

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

S. Hossein Mousavinezhad, Western Michigan University; Liang Dong, Western Michigan University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

, wireless engineering and computer engineering seminar. He was co-PI for a DSP grant funded by the NSF. He has received other NSF and government grants in addition to equipment grants from Texas Instruments in support of his teaching/research activities in the DSP field. He is on NSF panel reviewing proposals and was on an NSF review panel in October 2002 recommending curriculum guidelines for Computer Engineering (A Volume of the Computing Curricula Series, 2006, ACM and IEEE).Liang Dong, Western Michigan University Dr. Liang Dong received the B.S. degree in applied physics with minor in computer engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, in 1996, and

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education III

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Cordelia Brown, Purdue University; David Meyer, Purdue University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

“inverted” course formats werecreated for two core computer engineering classes: a sophomore-level Introduction to DigitalSystems Design course, and a junior-level Microprocessor System Design and Interfacing course.Both of these are 4-credit hour courses that include an integrated laboratory. In the experimental formats, the basic lecture content was delivered asynchronously viastreaming video, while collaborative solving of homework problems accompanied by a detailedwalkthrough of their solutions was done synchronously (i.e., during scheduled class periods) –which we refer to as directed problem solving (DPS). Traditional assigned (outside-of-class)written homework was replaced by collaborative problem solving by students working in smallteams

Conference Session

Optical and Wireless Communication Systems

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ernest Kim, University of San Diego

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

taken by students concurrently.Bibliography Page 12.1248.71. Jandhyala, V.; Kuga, Y.; Allstot, D.; Shi, C.J.R.., “Bridging circuits and electromagnetics in a curriculum aimed at microelectronic analog and microwave simulation and design,” Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Microelectronic Systems Education, 2005. (MSE '05), pp. 45 – 46, 12-14 June 2005.2. Munoz, M.; Garrod, S., “In process development of an advanced undergraduate communications laboratory,” Proceedings of the 27th Annual Frontiers in Education Conference, 1997, vol.2, pp. 751 – 755, 5-8 Nov 1997,3. Lumori, M. L

Conference Session

New Trends in ECE Education II

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Dorin Patru, Rochester Institute of Technology; Daniel Phillips, Rochester Institute of Technology; Eric Peskin, Rochester Institute of Technology (COE)

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

are outlined and how these topics meet the intendedinstructional objectives is shown. A description of the lab assignments, which complement thelectures and further foster the instructional objectives follows. Finally, possible futureimprovements are indicated.IntroductionThe introduction of Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) devices in the 1980s made theintegration of memory and input / output peripherals along with the central processing unitpossible. This resulted in the development of the prototypical microcontroller, also commonlyreferred to as an integrated microcomputer. Their ubiquitous use in almost all contemporaryelectronic systems indicates the importance of courses which teach electrical engineeringstudents how to use and/or

Conference Session

New Trends in ECE Education II

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Zekeriya Aliyazicioglu, California State Polytechnic University-Pomona; Saeed Monemi, California State Polytechnic University-Pomona; Tim Lin, California State Polytechnic University-Pomona

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

starting point to study in the electrical andcomputer engineering program. It is interesting because of the multimedia capability and theability of the students to make something happen with audio signals. Also, discrete time signalsand systems are used increasingly in a wide spectrum of applications, such as; instrumentation,telecommunications, medical, automotive, control, graphics/imaging, military, consumerelectronics, industrial, voice/speech etc. This will help students get an idea on how and wherethey can use it. For that reason it should be introduced to students early because it would help inrecruitment and retention of electrical and computer engineering students. To motivate thebeginning engineers to the hard work of connecting

Conference Session

Digital and Embedded System Design

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Lynne Slivovsky, California Polytechnic State University; Albert Liddicoat, California Polytechnic State University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

the past four decades has fueled theinformation age and an era of ubiquitous computing. Furthermore, the exponential increase inthe number of transistors available in integrated circuits has drastically changed the field ofelectrical and computer engineering. Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools allow systemsengineers to work at higher-levels of abstraction to design increasingly more complex systems.Embedded system design has been a keystone course in electrical and computer engineeringcurricula. Following the migration from discrete components to programmable logic devices inintroductory digital design courses we expect to see a similar, yet more selective, shift to the useof soft core processors in future microprocessor and embedded systems

Conference Session

ECE Pedagogy and Assessment

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Owe Petersen, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Stephen Williams, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Eric Durant, Milwaukee School of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

2000” (EC2000, now called the Engineering Criteria) was implemented inthe later 1990s. Many aspects of the new criteria required a new mind-set and were quitedifferent from the Traditional Criteria, which had significant elements of “bean counting.”EC2000 at its heart was to allow greater freedom in how an engineering program defined itselfvia its intent, its constituencies’ needs, and its curriculum [1][2][3]. But, along with freedom tochoose comes the need to properly understand the new criteria and its implications.One item of lingering confusion relates to the program educational objectives and programoutcomes. Even now significant difficulties appear to exist in understanding the meaning of