Requirements for the Effective Application of Personal Instrumentation in ECE Undergraduate Courses
- Conference
- Location
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Salt Lake City, Utah
- Publication Date
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June 23, 2018
- Start Date
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June 23, 2018
- End Date
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July 27, 2018
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Electrical and Computer
- Tagged Topic
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Diversity
- Page Count
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28
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--30933
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/30933
- Download Count
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781
Paper Authors
Kenneth A. Connor Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Kenneth Connor is a professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering (ECSE) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where he teaches courses on electromagnetics, electronics and instrumentation, plasma physics, electric power, and general engineering. His research involves plasma physics, electromagnetics, photonics, biomedical sensors, engineering education, diversity in the engineering workforce, and technology enhanced learning. He learned problem solving from his father (who ran a gray iron foundry), his mother (a nurse) and grandparents (dairy farmers). He has had the great good fortune to always work with amazing people, most recently professors teaching circuits and electronics from 13 HBCU ECE programs and the faculty, staff and students of the Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications (LESA) ERC, where he is Education Director. He was RPI ECSE Department Head from 2001 to 2008 and served on the board of the ECE Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) from 2003 to 2008. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE.
Dianna Newman University at Albany-SUNY
Dr. Dianna Newman is a research professor at the University at Albany/SUNY. Her major areas of study are program evaluation with an emphasis in STEM related programs. She has numerous chapters, articles, and papers on technology-supported teaching and learning as well as systems-change stages pertaining to technology adoption.
Kathy Ann Gullie Ph.D. Gullie Consultant Services
Dr. Kathy Gullie has extensive experience as a Senior Evaluator and Research Associate through the Evaluation Consortium at the University at Albany/SUNY and Gullie Cnsultant Services/ZScore. She was the principal investigator in several educational grants including an NSF engineering grant supporting Historically Black University and Colleges; "Building Learning Communities to Improve Student Achievement: Albany City School District” , and “Educational Leadership Program Enhancement Project at Syracuse University” Teacher Leadership Quality Program. She is also the PI on both “Syracuse City School District Title II B Mathematics and Science Partnership: Science Project and Mathematics MSP Grant initiatives. She is currently the principle investigator on a number of grants including a 21st century grant and an NSF Transformong Undergraduate Education in STEM grant.
Robin L. Getz
Analog Devices, Inc.
orcid.org/0000-0002-2218-1389
Robin is currently the Director of Systems Engineering at Analog Devices, and has over twenty years of diverse industry experience in engineering leadership, product marketing and sales with multi-national semiconductor firms, spending his last 15 years at Analog Devices Inc. He has a successful track record of being a highly motivated, strategic thinker, with a passion for technology, and education. Robin currently manages a multi-national, multi-disciplinary team of engineers who deliver high volume board designs, overseeing schematic capture, layouts, initial and volume manufacturing, EMI, ESD and vibration testing for regulatory compliance (CE, FCC), and production test development, and mechanical design for boxing/packaging, for both OEM customers and ADI's education outreach.
Robin obtained his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1994 from the University of Saskatchewan, in Saskatoon, Canada. Robin holds 4 patents in the area of acoustic / thermal control for personal computers.
Douglas A. Mercer Analog Devices Inc.
Doug Mercer received the B.S.E.E degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in 1977. He has 35 years experience in the linear IC industry in the design and development of high resolution and high speed data converter products. Since joining Analog Devices in 1977 he has contributed directly or indirectly to more than 30 commercial products. He holds 13 patents.
He was a full time Analog Devices employee until 2009, the last 14 years as an ADI Fellow, the highest level of technical contributor at ADI.
Since 2009 he has transitioned to the role of Consulting Fellow at ADI working part time, most recently in the area of undergraduate EE education outreach and development, principally as ADI’s point of contact with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
John D. Kelly North Carolina A&T State University
Dr. John C. Kelly, Jr. is chair and associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina A&T State University. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware. Dr. Kelly’s research interests include hardware security in cyber-physical systems and embedded systems security. He also contributes to research on engineering education, enhanced retention of underrepresented minorities in engineering, and hands-on learning techniques.
Craig J. Scott Morgan State University
Dr. Craig Scott received his Ph.D. and B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Howard University and a M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. Dr. Scott currently serves as Interim Dean at the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. School of Engineering at Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland. His educational scholarly endeavors include conducting pedagogical studies on learning technologies and remedial math preparation for engineering students. He instructs courses in computer vision, computer graphics, computational electrical engineering, electromagnetics and characterization of semiconductor materials.
Mohamed F. Chouikha Howard University
Dr. Mohamed Chouikha is a professor and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Howard University. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado–Boulder. Dr. Chouikha’s research interests include machine learning, intelligent control, and multimedia signal processing communications for secure networks, among other areas. He also focuses on enhancing recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities in the STEM areas in general, engineering in particular.
Yacob Astatke Morgan State University
Dr. Yacob Astatke completed both his Doctor of Engineering and B.S.E.E. degrees from Morgan State University (MSU) and his M.S.E.E. from Johns Hopkins University. He is currently Assistant Vice President for International Affairs at MSU. Dr. Astatke was a full-time faculty member in the School of Engineering for over 20 years, where he rose to the position of Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education. He has more than 20 years experience in the development and delivery of synchronous and asynchronous web-based course supplements for electrical engineering courses. He also runs several exciting summer camps geared towards middle school, high school, and community college students to expose and increase their interest in pursuing Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. For over a decade now, Dr. Astatke has facilitated the donation of 250+ Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) portable laboratory instrumentation boards and has conducted capacity-building training workshops for five universities in Ethiopia. This work has improved the education of thousands of ECE students in Ethiopia annually. He has expanded his services to other African countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, and Cameroon. Dr. Astatke is recipient of several awards, including the 2016 Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC)-Airbus Diversity Award, 2016 Black Engineer of the Year (BEYA) for College Level Promotion of Education, and the 2013 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) National Outstanding Teaching Award.
Abdelnasser A. Eldek Jackson State University
Dr. Abdelnasser A. Eldek obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 2004 from the University of Mississippi. Currently, he is Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Jackson State University. His main research areas include Applied Electromagnetics, Antennas, Phased Arrays, RF/Microwave Circuits, Metamaterial, and Numerical Methods.
Petru Andrei Florida A&M University, Florida State University
Dr. Petru Andrei is Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Florida A&M University and Florida Stat University (FAMU-FSU) College of Engineering. He is the FSU campus education director for the NSF-ERC Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM) and has much experience in recruiting and advising graduate, undergraduate, REU, and K-12 students, as well as in working with RET teachers. Dr. Andrei has published over 100 articles in computational electronics, electromagnetics, energy storage devices, and large scale systems.
Otsebele E. Nare Hampton University
Otsebele Nare is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Hampton University, VA. He received his electrical engineering doctorate from Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD, in 2005. His research interests include System Level Synthesis Techniques, Energy Microgrids and K-16 Integrative STEM education. The Integrative STEM work includes engineering education research on the usage of personal instrumentation tools as well as access of technology tools and STEM education to K-12 students. His teaching assignments are mainly on the fundamental courses of electric circuits, digital electronics and energy conversion.
Mandoye Ndoye Tuskegee University
Mandoye Ndoye received the B.S.E.E. degree from the Rensselear Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, in 2002, the MS degree in Mathematics and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, in 2010. After completing his Ph.D. studies, he joined the Center of Applied Scientific Computing, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as a Research Staff Member. From 2012 to 2014, he was a Research Associate at Howard University. Since 2014, he has been an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tuskegee University, Tuskegee, AL. His research interests center on signal/image processing, sensor data analytics, intelligent infrastructure systems and power systems optimization.
Demetris Geddis Hampton University
Demetris L. Geddis is an associate professor and Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Hampton University. He has extensive research experience in the areas of Integrated optoelectronics, Optics, Microelectronics, and Electromagnetics. He has worked as a Research and Design Engineer at Motorola and Bell laboratories. Also, he worked at NASA Langley Research Center as a NASA faculty fellow for the Nondestructive Evaluation Sciences Branch where he performed research in the area of optical fiber sensing for real time health monitoring of aerospace vehicles. Current research interests and publications are in the areas of Photonics, Optoelectronics, Microelectronics, Heterogeneous thin film integration, single-fiber bi-directional communications, optical sensing, and ring lasers. From 2008 to 2011, he was a Research Engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute where he fabricated scalable multiplexed ion traps for quantum computing applications. Before joining Hampton University in 2017, Prof. Geddis was a faculty member at Norfolk State University for 12 years.
Shujun Yang Alabama A&M University
Shujun Yang received PhD in electrical engineering from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, in 2006. From 2006 to 2008, he was an engineer at Applied Materials Inc., Sunnyvale, California. From 2008 to 2009, he was an engineer at Continental AG (former Siemens VDO), Huntsville, Alabama. Since 2009, he has been teaching at Department of Electrical Engineering, Alabama A&M University, Huntsville, Alabama. He is a member of IEEE, and a member of Microwave Theory and Techniques Society.
Abstract
Over the last few years, ECE education has been undergoing some dramatic changes made possible by the availability of personal instrumentation such as Mobile Studio (RPI), myDAQ (National Instruments), Analog Discovery (Digilent/NI) and others. All of these devices were designed to free ECE undergrads from the constraints of fixed space, equipment and course scheduling so they can conduct experiments whenever and wherever they wish. Instructors are now also able to design the learning environment for their students that focuses on students doing while learning theory rather than separate lab based activities. The freedom for both students and instructors to practice and experience what is theoretically authentic rather than what has historically been possible has been shown to positively impact student learning and subsequent interest in continued learning and career options. Evidence indicates that hands-on learning is helping to recruit and retain college engineering students and is enhancing their future employment opportunities. Continued and expanded use of ECP learning, however has identified some barriers to use including hardware acquisition and use. The purpose of this paper is to identify the issues related to hardware, to determine potiental solutions, and to share information and solutions gleaned from successful adaptation. For example, while the cost of these active learning platforms is quite low (usually less than or comparable to the price of a typical new ECE textbook), many schools find it a major challenge to ask their students to purchase or even rent the existing device options. As a solution, some institutions purchase a reasonable collection of personal instruments and then loan them to their students. This solution, however, has its own barrier, since it is difficult or impossible to provide the full 24 hour/seven days a week, full 4 year program access needed to realize the potential of the Experiment Centric Pedagogy enabled by these excellent modules. In addition, research and evaluation have found many other areas of application of personal instrumentation before and after undergraduate education including high school STEM classes, continuing education, outreach/recruitment activities, etc. that can reach more people, more sites, and have a greater impact on engineering. Pilots of these uses, however, indicate that this is realistic only if units are significantly less expensive. At the current time, based on current development practices, a much lower price requires reducing performance in some way. This raises the question of what capabilities are sufficient for use in different settings and for different target uses, e.g. what performance criteria must be met in each of the application areas? More specifically, within each of these uses, we must also address what dynamic range, frequency response, ADC resolution, power levels, software, instructional support, etc. are necessary? More broadly, there is also a need to consider the scope and sequence of learning. What course content can be addressed with only frequencies through the audio range? How important is MATLAB or LabVIEW connectivity? What cross platform tools need to be supported (Windows, Linux, OS-X, etc)? Does this provide the pedagogical scaffolding to prepare students for using more advanced/capable instruments in future years? This presentation will help lay the groundwork for future discussions on issues relevant to continued and expanded use of ECP/mobile device supported learning.
Connor, K. A., & Newman, D., & Gullie, K. A., & Getz, R. L., & Mercer, D. A., & Kelly, J. D., & Scott, C. J., & Chouikha, M. F., & Astatke, Y., & Eldek, A. A., & Andrei, P., & Nare, O. E., & Ndoye, M., & Geddis, D., & Yang, S. (2018, June), Requirements for the Effective Application of Personal Instrumentation in ECE Undergraduate Courses Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--30933
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