Conference Session

Laboratory Development in ECE Education

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Peter Mark Jansson, Rowan University; Ulrich Schwabe, Rowan University; Andrew Hak, Rowan University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

among team players iscrucial to the success of the final design. Throughout the following semester the engineeringstudents will interact with each other, their professor and professional engineers from the utilityas well as their industrial sponsor (SunTechnics) to ensure that they deliver their part of theproject which includes: specifications, designs and plans for the medium voltage switchgear,480V to 33kV transformers, 480V switchgear and cable sizing for the required project deadline.Their key resources include their engineering education, their professors, their new contacts on Page 13.882.2the utility professional team and their partners

Conference Session

ECE Poster Session

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Asad Azemi, Pennsylvania State University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

by the students. Centra system was chosen due to students’familiarity with the system and the ability to download the recordings as an executable file.Implementation PlanThis section describes, in detail, our implementation plan including the hardware-software. Theidea behind using Tablet PC and Centra system came after our successful experience in flexibledelivery system using Centra.Hardware-Software requirementsThe software and hardware requirements includes: Centra, Multisim, MATLAB, one Tablet PCfor the instructor and one for each team, consisting of 2-3 students, and Internet-camera for theinstructor. Wireless Internet connection is also an important issue as it should be capable ofhandling the required bandwidth.Teaching ProcessA

Conference Session

ECE Pedagogy and Assessment II

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Dale Buechler, University of Wisconsin-Platteville

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

full-time salariedpositions with families. This caused some of the students to reevaluate their plan. As a resultseveral of the students are planning to take 1 class each semester plus one in the summer insteadof the planned two classes per semester in the fall and spring. This has also impacted ourschedule of projected course offerings.On the positive side, the mathematics issues which we thought might be a major stumbling blockfor those students who either took the prerequisite course long ago and forgotten it or for thosewho never really learned it in the first-place has not been as bad as we had envisioned. Throughin-class reviews and review material/links on the webpage we have been able to help studentsmeet most of the mathematical

Conference Session

ECE Poster Session

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Rosemarie Guzman, University of the Pacific; Michael Golanbari, University of the Pacific

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

design project course, and plans tocontinue to suggest the project to students in future offerings of the course. Page 13.548.2IntroductionThe purpose of the project is to design an annunciator system for one of the units of the HarveyO. Banks Pumping Plant, a facility of the Department of Water Resources (a State of Californiaagency). The requirements call for the annunciator system to be installed in Unit 3 of the plant.There are eleven units total. Unit 3 is one of the older existing and fully functional units in thepumping plant, and a less modern annunciator system is already installed and fully functional.Therefore, the design needs to

Conference Session

New Trends in ECE Education II

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

James Harris, California Polytechnic State University; Dominic Dalbello, Allan Hancock College; Jianbiao Pan, California Polytechnic State University; Albert Liddicoat, California Polytechnic State University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

into the curriculum1. The project-based learning experience isaimed to provide a multidisciplinary environment to design the hardware and softwarecomponents of a system while industrial and manufacturing engineering students fabricate andassemble the boards. This experience in the undergraduate computer engineering curriculumwill better prepare students to enter the workforce after obtaining a four-year degree and to bettermeet their employers’ expectations. Page 13.551.3To support this plan we have partnered with Allan Hancock Community College to develop alower-division curriculum module to make Printed Circuit Board (PCB) design

Conference Session

New Trends in ECE Education I

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sandra Yost, University of Detroit Mercy; Mohan Krishnan, University of Detroit Mercy; Mark Paulik, University of Detroit Mercy

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

to match the dramatic growthin the ECE field, creating an overloaded curriculum and encouraging opportunism; that is, thedevelopment of strategies to cope with testing requirements without the attendant deep-seated Page 13.421.2learning. 2 The program we have developed directly addresses these issues while building ontraditional program strengths, including design, practice, and a strong humanities-based corecurriculum. The broad goals of our curricular implementation plan are summarized below. • The plan is intended to improve student motivation, innovation, and learning through the use of teaching paradigms that are mindful of the

Conference Session

New Trends in ECE Education I

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mary Baker, Texas Tech University; Brian Nutter, Texas Tech University; Mohammed Saed, Texas Tech University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

met with the team in the early planning phases and discussedpractical aspects of design and implementation. This team visited a senior citizenscenter, but did not have a clearly identified customer. The adaptive bicycle team had amentor from out of state that serves on the TTU ECE Industrial Advisory Board and is an Page 13.406.4avid cyclist. This mentor met personally with the team at the beginning and at the end ofthe project, and communicated via telephone and e-mail on numerous occasions. Thisteam also had a specific customer, a disabled child, who met with the team,communicated her needs, and later evaluated the final result. Each team had a

Conference Session

ECE Pedagogy and Assessment I

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Charles Kim, Howard University; Mohamed Chouikha, Howard University; Veronica Thomas, Howard University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

Howard University in 1982. She is currently a Professor within the Department of Human Development and Psychoeducational Studies and Senior Research Associate with the Capstone Institute, both at Howard University. Dr. Thomas’ research interests include culturally responsive evaluations and the educational and socio-emotional outcomes of students of color. Dr. Thomas has collaborated with the Department of Electrical Engineering in planning and implementing evaluation studies. Page 13.59.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2008 Mobile Studio Experience of Experiential

Conference Session

Design in the ECE Curriculum

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

James Friauf, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Stephen Williams, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Steven Reyer, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Owe Petersen, Milwaukee School of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

final designreports, detailing the exact design, and including test plans and results. These three reportsrequire significant team cooperation to produce – defining tasks, assigning work, meetingdeadlines, agreeing on technical aspects, integrating ideas, and managing the writing project.The quality of the reports typically improves as the quarters progress, with the teams meshingbetter and polishing their writing skills. It is important that each team report have a formal“editor” – the person who not only proofreads the report, but ensures that the tone and style ofthe writing is consistent. When this is not employed, the authors have often observed an abrupt“jump” in tone from one chapter to the next.Formal presentations are required at the

Conference Session

Design in the ECE Curriculum

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jin-Hwan Lee, University of Cincinnati; Ali Asgar Bhagat, University of Cincinnati; Karen Davis, University of Cincinnati; Ian Papautsky, University of Cincinnati

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

communication skills with sufficient understanding andknowledge of their research topics. At the end of spring quarter, senior students prepared andperformed a final senior project presentation well. A team-based project allowed peer learning,teaching, and tutoring as well as expository instruction. Through multidisciplinarycollaborations project, senior students could experience not only BioMEMS research but also theimportance of safety issues, improvement of communication skills between team members and Page 13.1042.7activities, and careful schedule planning to reduce dead time. After finishing the two projects,one of three students

Conference Session

New Trends in ECE Education II

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Aleksandr Panchul, UTSA; David Akopian, UTSA

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

constant flow of the students who has their very first experience with not only Page 13.428.8cell phone programming, but also with programming in general. That is why the toolkit includesmeans for own software application development. If beginners can use included libraries for theexperimenting without any additional programming, then advanced users can use ourdevelopment templates to include their own algorithms. The basis of the application and itsbuilding blocks could be dissected to show how it works inside and why it was the best way todo it.Development and debuggingThe development of the application has the cycle: planning, writing the code

Conference Session

Embedded System Design

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Alex Doboli, State University of New York-Stony Brook; Eddie Currie, Resonance Publications, Inc.; Patrick Kane, Cypress Semiconductor Corporation; Dave Van Ess, Cypress Semiconductor Corporation

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

it hard to explore the open-ended aspects of their projectdescription, as well as the correlations between the precision – speed – and memoryrequirements of the subsystems.Student suggestions for improvement included an overview presentation of popular embeddedarchitectures (including FPGAs) and summaries of the strength and weaknesses of each.Students also indicated that the work requires very good coursework planning so that the labwork and course project work do not become overwhelming.Another aspect that we plan to further detail is the impact of constraints such as power andenergy consumption on reconfigurable embedded design. We are considering the presentation ofmodels for power and energy consumption in analog, digital hardware and

Conference Session

Design in the ECE Curriculum

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mihaela Radu, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Clint Cole, Washington State University, Pullman; Mircea Alexandru Dabacan, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania; Shannon Sexton, Rose Hulman Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, teaching in the areas of digital and data acquisition systems. His current research interests include data acquisition systems, FPGA design, and new educational methods to teach digital systems design.Shannon Sexton, Rose Hulman Institute of Technology Shannon Sexton received her B.S. from Ball State University in 2001 and her M.A. degree in Experimental Psychology from Indiana State University in 2003. She has completed 59 hours toward her PhD in Social Psychology from Northern Illinois University. She currently works as Director of Assessment at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology where she assists faculty in planning, conducting, and analyzing

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education I

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Christopher Anderson, U.S. Naval Academy; Richard Buehrer, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

demandthroughout the duration of the project.Forest measurements were performed on one to two days per week throughout the first six weeksof the summer, with the remaining days devoted to processing and analyzing the data. The firstseveral measurement days were primarily focused on training the students on setting up andoperating the equipment, experimental design and planning, troubleshooting, and good research Page 13.200.6practices. On the remaining days, students were gradually given greater responsibility,culminating with the final two days where the students were given the open-ended assignment ofrecording measurements for a particular forest

Conference Session

Design in the ECE Curriculum

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mark Cambron, Western Kentucky University; Walter Collett, Western Kentucky University; Stacy Wilson, Western Kentucky University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

, EE students are assigned to teams. Each team is Page 13.1027.2assigned a unique design project and must solve and implement a design problem throughout thesemester. These projects are often industrially supported. Recently, some projects have beenextended into the senior year. EE300 is taken the spring semester before the year long seniordesign sequence and is an important foundation to the senior project experience.The first course of the senior year experience is EE 400, EE Design IV. During this course,students thoroughly plan their capstone project. At the beginning of the semester, students areplaced on teams and are assigned projects

Conference Session

Project-Based Learning in ECE Education

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Peter Schubert, Packer Engineering; Matthew Beatty, Naperville North High School

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

Society for Engineering Education, 2008 Harvesting of Lunar Iron: Competitive Hands-on LearningAbstractElectromagnets can be used to harvest free iron from lunar soil, known as regolith. Iron isimportant to the US plans for a lunar outpost. It does not rust in space, making it an excellentconstruction material. Circumpolar railroad tracks would allow a slowly-moving train to followthe sun, making agriculture possible, and enabling continuous operation of factories producingsolar cells and oxygen for life support and propulsion. Designing an iron harvesting apparatusfor the unique lunar environment requires that students re-think tacit assumptions about howthings work.Within the context of a 33-student summer program, two college interns

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education II

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ronald Hayne, The Citadel

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

totaling 179 bits of information can becaptured and traced with the integrated logic analyzer. Using conventional methods, thesesignals would need to be converted to ports and routed to I/O pins before being connected to anexternal logic analyzer. This extra routing and loading is cumbersome and could greatly alter thetiming and performance of the hardware under test.Results and ConclusionsThe program of instruction described in this paper will be implemented at The Citadel in a pilotlecture course during the spring semester 2008. The approach is to supplement textbookexamples with interactive classroom demonstrations involving both VHDL simulation and on-chip testing of FPGA hardware implementations. Planned enrollment is 15 seniors in

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education I

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Gisele Ragusa, University of Southern California; Michael Khoo, University of Southern California; Ellis Meng, University of Southern California

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. In thispaper, the ERC researcher report on preliminary data that have been collected to guide thecurricular reform in addition to reporting on the comprehensive plan that they have developed tomeet the needs of engineers in biomedical fields in 2020.2Curricular reform is typically a slow and arduous process in research universities. Traditionalcurriculum in engineering education involves deductive instruction in which the instructorslecture on general principles with limited application of the principles to real life engineeringsituations and simulations. Deductive instructional approaches have significant limits inpreparing engineers for a changing global society as required by the National

Conference Session

ECE Poster Session

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Thomas Cavicchi, Grove City College

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

Celsius set point.Side Benefits of the PLC ProjectsAs well as being a multifaceted programming experience, the student work on the PLC forcesstudents to adopt some important behaviors. Students must also plan properly and treat theirclassmates with respect in a situation of limited resources. Grove City College has purchasedseveral copies of the software but has only one PLC. Students are able to log in remotely atnight to lab PCs that have the software on them to develop and test code (using the emulator).As only one student can use a PC at a time, there must be time-sharing and such etiquette asbeing patient with each other when one is on a machine that someone else wants to use, notlocking up the PC under his/her name, remembering to log off

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education II

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Cordelia Brown, Purdue University; Yung-Hsiang Lu, Purdue University; David Meyer, Purdue University; Mark C Johnson, Purdue University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

the results when applyingthis approach to a senior-level software course. We plan to assess the learning experienceof the students and compare the results with the two hardware courses many studentshave taken earlier.IntroductionSince the 1990s, streaming videos through the Internet has become widely adopted forentertainment as well as education. Today’s college students are familiar with thistechnology. Our institution started podcasting in several classes in August 2005, butmany universities have not exploited using streaming videos to enhance learningexperience. One objection is the belief that learning should be interactive among studentsand instructors.A few Purdue University Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty members1 startedan

Conference Session

ECE Pedagogy and Assessment II

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Bruce Krogh, Carnegie Mellon University; Tsuhan Chen, Carnegie Mellon University; Tuviah Schlesinger, Carnegie Mellon University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

critical now than ever before to removethe EE vs. CE distinction, and how we plan to do this through changes in our core curriculum.Does ECE = EE + CE? “Many authorities believe that the two fields of "electrical and electronics Page 13.477.2 engineering" and "computer science and engineering" have now established separate identities, although they still have much in common. Because of the breadth of the field, however, general statements about "electrical engineering" include electrical, electronics, computer engineering, computer science, and related areas of arts and sciences in the broadest context and

Conference Session

New Trends in ECE Education I

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sanjay Raman, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Da Silva Luiz, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Masoud Agah, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Allen MacKenzie, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Christopher Maxey, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Amy Bell, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

practices in later core circuits/electronics and computerengineering lab courses; the main focus here is to give the students an introductory hands-onexperience with sensors, circuits and electronics.Once the groups have built up their circuit and established data communications with theirlaptop, they perform a simple experiment measuring the digital output from the on-boardADC for a range of light and dark conditions presented to the photosensor. In their post-labanalysis, the groups are required to convert this digital information back to an analogresistance value for each of the recorded data points. Accurate sensor calibration was notintroduced in the current version of this lab, but is planned to be introduced in future iterationof the course

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education I

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Wookwon Lee, Gannon University; Fong Mak, Gannon University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

managementplan, and test plan. Actual design and verification are conducted in a team environment usingmodern software and hardware tools. Ethics and legal issues are also discussed as part of thecourse. In the subsequent sections, details of the course are provided, as well as, evaluation ofcourse outcomes and students’ learning experience in this course.Course Objectives and TopicsIn our ECE graduate curriculum, the Engineering Project and Management is a core courseintended for the first-year graduate students. This course focuses on the skills required to managethe development of effective system architectures from concept through engineering design andproduction. The course objectives are i) to understand ethics and the common developmentprocess of

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education I

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

James Klein, University of Idaho; Herbert Hess, University of Idaho; Brian Johnson, University of Idaho

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

guidance. By allowing the senior design team to completesuch tasks as problem definition and project scheduling, essentially on their own, theundergraduate students effectively decided the level and type of design work that they would beundertaking. This method of integration ensures that the design aspect of the senior designproject is not taken away from the undergraduate students.From Mentor to Team MemberThe transition time from graduate mentor to integrated team member is something that must bedecided on a project by project basis. It is suggested that following the initial planning phase ofthe senior design project, the graduate student may be integrated into the team in order to helpwith the burden of initial research and solution

Conference Session

ECE Pedagogy and Assessment I

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Michael Golanbari, University of the Pacific; Rick Garlikov, Garlikov.Com

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

arerelatively difficult teaching goals. This paper proposes that it may be possible toaccomplish these goals by combining the use of traditional lectures with active andcollaborative learning and with the Socratic Method of directive questioning/reasoning,in which the instructor poses a problem and asks a series of directive, probing questions,to help students follow a particular approach to solving the problem.The directed questions contain useful information to assist students in (a) understandingthe problem, (b) devising a plan to solve the problem, (c) carrying out the plan, and,finally, (d) reviewing/extending the problem. In the last step [step (d)], students areencouraged to reflect and look back at the implications of the problem solution, what

Conference Session

ECE Pedagogy and Assessment II

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Suk Kim Chin, Australian Catholic University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

AC 2008-1661: A STRUCTURED ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK FOR TEAMWORKSuk Kim Chin, Australian Catholic University Suk Kim Chin is a Lecturer in the Institute of Business and Informatics in the Australian Catholic University, Sydney. She graduated from the University of Technology (Sydney, NSW) with a PhD in Telecommunications Engineering and a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education Teaching and Learning in 2003. Her research interests include multicast technology, enterprise resource planning, and developing effective teaching models in engineering education. Page 13.111.1© American Society for Engineering

Conference Session

Innovations in ECE Education II

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Khalid Al-Olimat, Ohio Northern University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

enables the Page 13.943.2instructor to custom design and individualize instruction and learner to “plan, execute, andmanage” his or her learning experience at the rate, place, and time of the learner’s choice.Folkestad and De Miranda11 have used multimedia through screen-capture to teach students howto use CAD software. They reported that students were unsatisfied with this instructional tooldue to its fast pace and the need to switch back and forth from the recorded lecture to the CADsoftware. In paper12 a new instructional tool was developed and the problems encountered inreference11 were solved by having a variable pace (slow, medium, fast

Conference Session

New Trends in ECE Education I

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Fred Cady, (Retired) Montana State University; John McLellan, Freescale Semiconductor

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

Overview Lesson Planning: A microcontroller must be connected to external devices to be able to do any useful This module starts the work. A typical embedded application would have the microcontroller receiving student using the I/O information (inputting) from an input device, modifying or making decisions based capabilities of the on the information and the task at hand, and outputting some control action or microcontroller. It does information to an output device. not use interrupts. Learning Objectives This module will help you learn about the parallel input

Conference Session

Project-Based Learning in ECE Education

Collection

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Albert Liddicoat, California Polytechnic State University; Jianbiao Pan, California Polytechnic State University; James Harris, California Polytechnic State University; Lynne Slivovsky, California Polytechnic State University

Tagged Divisions

Electrical and Computer

interfaces, communications protocols and data structures needed for theproject. Students then organize into functional teams and establish design interdependencies andmilestones. After the design review, towards the end of the first quarter, students place purchaseorders to acquire prototype hardware and development tools.At the beginning of the second quarter the functional teams design the subcomponents and writesoftware. At times, design changes must be made and schedule recovery plans established.Simulation environments may be used to facilitate progress before hardware is available orfunctional. After the subcomponents have been implemented and verified, the team begins thesystem integration and debugging phase of the project. The teams