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A NEW COURSE ON PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT FOR ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY

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Conference

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Atlanta, Georgia

Publication Date

June 23, 2013

Start Date

June 23, 2013

End Date

June 26, 2013

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

New Course Development Concepts in ET

Tagged Division

Engineering Technology

Page Count

14

Page Numbers

23.79.1 - 23.79.14

DOI

10.18260/1-2--19093

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/19093

Download Count

666

Paper Authors

biography

Joseph A. Morgan Texas A&M University

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Joseph A. Morgan has over 20 years of military and industry experience in electronics and telecommunications systems engineering. He joined the Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution Department in 1989 and has served as the Program Director of the Electronics and Telecommunications Programs and as the Associate Department Head for Operations. He received his BS degree in electrical engineering (1975) from California State University, Sacramento, and his MS (1980) and DE (1983) degrees in industrial engineering from Texas A&M University. His education and research interests include project management, innovation and entrepreneurship, and embedded product/system development.

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biography

Jay R Porter Texas A&M University

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Jay R. Porter joined the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University in 1998 and is currently the Program Director for the Electronics Program. He received the BS degree in electrical engineering (1987), the MS degree in physics (1989), and the Ph.D. in electrical engineering (1993) from Texas A&M University. His areas of interest in research and education include product development, analog/RF electronics, instrumentation, and entrepreneurship.

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biography

Wei Zhan Texas A&M University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-9956-1910

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Dr. Wei Zhan is an Associate Professor of Electronics Engineering Technology at Texas A&M University. Dr. Zhan earned his D.Sc. in Systems Science from Washington University in St. Louis in 1991. From 1991 to 1995, he worked at University of California, San Diego and Wayne State University. From 1995 to 2006, he worked in the automotive industry as a system engineer. In 2006 he joined the Electronics Engineering Technology faculty at Texas A&M. His research activities include control system theory and applications to industry, system engineering, robust design, modeling, simulation, quality control, and optimization.

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Abstract

A NEW COURSE ON PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT FOR ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY Over the past two years, the Electronics Engineering Technology program at____________________ University has retooled its curriculum to create a strong focus in thearea of electronics product and system development. The impetus for this change is theevolving job market for graduates. Today, almost of the students graduating from theElectronics Program take engineering jobs in the product and system development sector,serving as applications engineers, product engineers, test engineers, and project managers. Froma technical standpoint, the new curriculum emphasizes analog/digital electronics, power,embedded systems hardware/software, communications, instrumentation and control. In addition,new courses in test and engineering statistics have been created and are being offered. However,through multiple meetings with the industrial advisory board it became clear that industry felt itvery important that students be exposed to the corporate engineering, financial, and business sideof product development through a formal course. Thus, this semester a new course in productdevelopment is being offered for the first time. While traditional engineering technology courses focus on the technical aspects ofengineering, this course attempts to bridge the gap between the technical and business sides ofproduct development. To develop this new course, the faculty visited with multiple industryexperts in the area of product development. From these visits, a list of required topics wascreated including understanding the product development process from concept to close out,appreciating business financials, developing a complete business case, working with customers,and being familiar with intellectual property concepts. One issue that the faculty encounteredearly during the course development was locating a good reference text. Due to the variety oftopics to be included, no single text book was found that could satisfy all of the course’s needs.To solve this problem, a custom E-book was created through a popular academic publisher. Byusing chapters from several business, marketing and engineering books, a text was created thatsuited the needs of the curriculum. This paper will present the details of the product development course including theprocess used to develop the course, the process used to create a custom textbook, and an in-depthlook at the course topics. The course involves a hands-on laboratory experience and this will bepresented as well. Finally, results from the course assessment and students comments will bediscussed.

Morgan, J. A., & Porter, J. R., & Zhan, W. (2013, June), A NEW COURSE ON PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT FOR ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY Paper presented at 2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia. 10.18260/1-2--19093

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