Summer Teaching Enhancement Grant
Final Report
Clark Shaver Abstract The summer grant was used to assist in the development of two courses new to Pittsburg State University in the Electronics Engineering Technology program. The first course is EET 341 Signals and Systems. This course was developed from the ground up using several nontraditional pedagogical devices. The second course is EET 247 – Programming for Electronic Devices. This course introduces electronics engineering technology students to programming concepts in a way that will be useful to them throughout their academic life and throughout their professional career. EET 341 – Signals and Systems Motivation This course is used to teach engineering concepts required for subsequent EET courses. These concepts include Fourier series, Fourier transforms, Laplace Transforms and Convolution. In order to be able to apply these concepts, our students generally will need some refreshing or an introduction in related topics. These related topics include, complex analysis, differential equations and partial fraction expansion among others. The objective of the teaching grant was to package the large amount of required and somewhat challenging concepts in an understandable manner. In doing this, it was also desirable to make these foundational concepts immediately applicable to the electronics discipline. Course Structure The course is divided into five sections: Each section consists of the following deliverables: 1. Signal Concepts 1. Exams 2. System Concepts 2. Projects 3. Fourier Analysis 3. Problem Set 4. Laplace Analysis 4. Journal of Empowered Learning 5. Filter Design Students are divided into project groups and stay in that group throughout the year. Summer Grant Activities The time in the summer was used to 1) outline the basic course structure. This structure was developed with insight from various discussions and presentation attended at a conference of the American Society of Engineering Educators (ASEE). Being new to academia, these conferences have proven very insightful and useful. I would encourage all who have come to academia on non‐traditional routes to seek out such conferences for their own disciplines. Another activity included 2) development of problem sets, exams and project statements. An overview of these topics are found below. The final summer activity for EET 341 was to setup MATLAB, and test out projects. MATLAB is a software used in mathematical/engineering problems. It has a graphical interface add‐on (SIMULINK) that allows the concepts taught in the course to be taught from simple examples to complex, real‐world interfacing for solving difficult problems. Problem Sets: Homework is not given out of the book. Problem sets are a set of in‐depth, challenging design and analysis problems that directly apply to EET topics. The objective is to avoid the feel of math homework, but rather engineering design. Exams: Exams are fairly traditional, short exams to test over the basic grasp of material. Projects: Applying basic concepts to produce interesting projects for students was a real challenge. The list of projects below detail the results of my work. 1.
Modeling the Acoustics of the Weede – Students determined various acoustical events that they thought would approximate a dirac function. These events were then recorded inside the Weede and in turn, mathematically convolved with a clean speech signal. The result was the untainted speech signal sounded as if speaking in a large auditorium, such as the Weede. Results can be seen at the website http://www.psueet.netau.net/. 2.
Image Filtering – Students were to take images, develop a mathematical filter for these images to produce an artistic version of the original picture. Unfortunately, there were software issues that prevented completion of this project. These issues have now been resolved and this project will be attempted in the fall of 2013. 3.
Music Synthesizer ‐ Students selected a recognizable song, and then developed mathematical models of the songs in order to synthesize the tune using MATLAB software. The songs were subsequently analyzed mathematically. This was successful. Teams chose, row, row, row your boat and Fur Elise. 4.
Motor Control – Students were required to make a closed loop system in MATLAB to control a small DC motor. The motor was interfaced with MATLAB through the use of a microcontroller. This is a complex task. Both groups got the motor to interface with the software, but due to time we had to move on. Kinks were worked out and this lab will be repeated in the future. 5.
Voice Filtering – Students were given a file with a spoken message that was covered by added noise. The students were required to develop a mathematical filter in MATLAB, attenuate the noise and listen to the spoken message. Again minor kinks, but overall the project was a success. Journal of Empowered Learning: The JEL was a device I concocted in order to help cover the details of the indepth mathematical concepts. The JEL is a notebook that students must turn in at the end of each section. The content of each section includes: 1. Notes over required internet learning modules. Each of these (approx.. 10 min) videos cover the “how‐to” of certain principles. Some videos are of me working various problems and some are public domain videos 2. Notes on reading assignments 3. In‐class group projects It was given the name “Empowered Learning” so I could emphasize the point that students can learn on their own and they do not need assistance to learn new concepts. It is the idea of an inverted classroom, but I stopped shy of complete inversion. Maybe I flipped it on its edge. ASSESSMENT DATA This is the first year for the course so there is not a year to year assessment comparison. The table below list results of each student outcome for 2012 in the course. Average Score % students at Student Outcome 0‐3 2 or above Model a signal using step, ramp, impulse and other basic functions
#1 1.857
57%
#2 #3 Analyze a 2nd order system's time‐response. Identify overshoot %, decay time, frequency and other response attributes
Analyze system/circuit's frequency response in the s‐domain or frequency domain. 1.857 86% 1.286 57% OVERVIEW ‐ EET 247 – Programming for Electronic Devices This course is used to teach introductory programming courses in a manner that is directly applicable to EET students. EET students will program throughout their academic life, but not in the setting as taught in traditional intro programming courses. During the summer lab assignments were developed. These lab assignment includes teaching basic concepts using microcontrollers, solving engineering problems with standard compilers, and introducing them to various options for pragmatic engineering problem solving such as solutions in VBA for excel. These new labs have not been used yet. The first round for the new labs will be the spring of 2013. It was determined that programming for the Android device, was simply too advanced for the entry level course. This topic will be dropped from the labs. One benefit of having this course segregated into the EET department is that EET concepts (not related directly to programming) will be introduced / reinforced. Such topics include ohm & power laws, Complex numbers and network reduction techniques.