Habibi, C. (2022, August), Hands-on vs simulation labs in Signals and Systems course  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41324

\bibitem{asee_peer_41324}
  Habibi, C. (2022, August), \emph{Hands-on vs simulation labs in Signals and Systems course}
  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN.
  10.18260/1-2--41324

Cyrus Habibi.  "Hands-on vs simulation labs in Signals and Systems course".  2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August.  ASEE Conferences, 2022.  https://peer.asee.org/41324 Internet.  15 Dec, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_41324}
  Cyrus Habibi.
  "Hands-on vs simulation labs in Signals and Systems course".
  \emph{2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2022.
  https://peer.asee.org/41324 Internet.  15 Dec, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_41324
author = "Cyrus Habibi"
title = "Hands-on vs simulation labs in Signals and Systems course"
booktitle = "2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2022"
month = "August"
address = "Minneapolis, MN"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/41324}
number = {10.18260/1-2--41324}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Signals and Systems is one of the fundamental courses commonly offered in electrical engineering departments. The course covers the discussion of basic signals and systems, convolution and impulse response, Fourier series and transform, Laplace transform, state variable analysis of continuous and discrete systems, sampling, etc. This course has a broad range of applications in electrical and system engineering, including but not limited to seismic data processing, communications, speech and image processing, defense electronics, consumer electronics, and consumer products. It also has applications in non-engineering fields whereas time series data is used such financial market analysis, weather predication, etc.
This course is accompanied by laboratory assignments to help students gain a deeper understanding of topics. Simulation-based experiments are introduced by many authors. In these experiments, MATLAB, Mathematica and LabView are frequently used, so students can have a deeper understanding of the course concepts. Although, simulation-based experiments are very helpful to learn the content in depth, they fail to provide empirical data. On the other hand, hands-on labs remain extremely important in electrical engineering program. 
There is a little work published on hands-on labs in Signals and Systems course. In the university of Wisconsin-Platteville, we designed and implemented a series of design-based, hands-on labs that students must complete by building electrical circuits. Students have shown interest for hands-on to verify their simulations.  In addition to hands-on, these labs are design-based. Students are given a set of specs based on their student’s identification number, and they are required to prove their design by building electrical circuit. 
For assessment and comparison between hands-on and simulation, four hands-on and one simulation labs were assigned to a class of signals and systems during the fall of 2021.   For the hands-on labs, students were required to prove their design using Spice software first, and then build and check off in the lab using function generator, oscilloscope, and network analyzer. At the end of the semester, a survey was administered to collect students’ feedback. In this paper, we describe the detail of each lab and students’ feedback. We believe circuit-based labs are helpful for instructors who want to add the design components in the course and bring hands-on experience to their students.


AU  - Cyrus Habibi
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Hands-on vs simulation labs in Signals and Systems course
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/41324
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--41324
ER  -