Implementing Student Centered Teaching Methodology in Electrical and Computer Engineering Courses
- Conference
- Location
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Minneapolis, MN
- Publication Date
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August 23, 2022
- Start Date
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June 26, 2022
- End Date
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June 29, 2022
- Conference Session
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ECE Division Technical Session 4: Student-centered Learning and Teaching Methodologies
- Page Count
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19
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--40473
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/40473
- Download Count
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359
Paper Authors
Yuchen Huang Portland State University
Yuchen Huang received her M.S.E.E. degree from Portland State University. She is the Director of ECE Digital IC Design Graduate Program Track at Portland State University. Her primary focus is on teaching. Prior to joining the ECE department at Portland State University, she was at Intel Corporation for 21 years in Hillsboro, Oregon, where she was a senior staff engineer, involved in key product development and industry adoption of technologies, standards, specifications and methodologies. She was the chairperson of cross-functional Joint Engineering Teams at Intel and industry consortium JEDEC DDR2 Memory Power Thermal Task Group, addressing system level memory power, thermal, and performance challenges. She has extensive experience in platform design, power management architecture and led the development of Intel’s Converged Platform Power Thermal Throttling Specification that maximizes re-usability across CPU generations and computing segments. She was the recipient of 20+ Intel Corporation awards for contributions to major product and industry initiatives. She is a member of ASEE.
Branimir Pejcinovic Portland State University
Branimir Pejcinovic received his Ph.D. degree from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is a Professor and former Associate Chair for Undergraduate Education at Portland State University, Electrical and Computer Engineering department. He has led department-wide changes in curriculum with emphasis on project- and lab-based instruction and learning. He was awarded best-paper award by ECE division of ASEE in 2017 for his work on freshman engineering course development. His research interests are in the areas of engineering education, microwave absorber design, ferroelectrics, photovoltaics, THz sensors, signal integrity, and semiconductor device characterization, design and simulation. He is a member of IEEE and ASEE.
Abstract
Abstract Many new faculties struggle on becoming effective instructors. Teaching undergraduate and graduate Electrical and Computer Engineering courses poses its own challenge since most of the concepts are complex and abstract. Students often find some of the lecture slides hard to understand. To make things worse, some students are afraid to ask questions even if they do not understand the material since they think if they ask questions, they will be considered stupid. How to teach something that is difficult to understand and how to effectively engage with students? In this paper, we present our own learning on how to become more effective instructors.
The purpose of this paper is to share the Student Centered Teaching Methodology (SCTM) that we developed, implemented, and assessed in the Electrical and Computer Engineering undergraduate and graduate courses. We found this methodology effective in improving students’ learning experience. We want to share the SCTM to help new faculty and experienced faculty to become more effective instructors.
The SCTM has five key components, and they are:
E - Easy-to-Understand: We develop course material that translates complex and abstract ECE concepts into something easy to understand. We deliver lecture speech using real life analogies and examples to help students make the connections on why they are learning what they are learning and how it is relevant.
E - Engaging: We proactively engage with students throughout the term by doing frequent check-ins with students on how they are doing in class.
E - Examples: We developed many worked examples to provide students chances to practice and solidify their learning. This inductive learning process proved to be very effective.
A - Accommodate: We accommodate students of diverse backgrounds and instill DEI into our teaching practice. For example, we hold extra office hours on weekends for students who work full time during the week and can only come to office hours on weekends.
F - Feedback: We seek real-time students’ feedbacks on our teaching throughout the term and make adjustment to our teaching to improve students’ learning experience.
We have found that SCTM worked well to help students’ learning experience across a diverse student population, and they promoted DEI. The effectiveness of these SCTM is quantitatively examined by assessing the students’ satisfaction with the learning process and their exam scores for courses with and without these practices implemented. We believe that our implementation of SCTM is effective and can be replicated elsewhere.
Huang, Y., & Pejcinovic, B. (2022, August), Implementing Student Centered Teaching Methodology in Electrical and Computer Engineering Courses Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40473
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