Taking the pulse of electronic-engineering education
I had the pleasure of attending the ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education) convention in Vancouver, B.C., recently and was surprised to see the amount of electronic engineering activity.
Throughout the week I was able to talk to professors, administrators, and students and discovered that there is a lot of activity around updating equipment in existing labs, outfitting new labs with equipment, and creating new curriculum to address changing technology. This seems like a good indicator that educational institutions are finding the resources they need to continue developing tomorrow’s engineers.
And because this was an international convention, I learned that it’s not just a North American phenomenon, but this is instead happening around the world. Along with participants from colleges and universities across America, I also spoke with people from Germany, Iraq, Belgium, and the United Arab Emirates. In each case they were looking for lab equipment, and more often than not, the first piece of equipment they wanted was an oscilloscope.
It seems that the oscilloscope continues to be the cornerstone of most university labs because of its capability, versatility, and unique ability to help students visualize the signals they learned about in class. As you would expect, most institutions are trying to get as much instrument as they can out of every dollar, so many were happy to see instruments that combine the capabilities of traditional scopes with those of logic analyzers. Mixed-signal instruments have been around for some time, but new features make it much easier for educators to create labs about both analog and digital and use the same instruments.
Of course, not everything was about oscilloscopes. Little River Research and Design showed a cool scale model of how rivers and river ecosystems work. There were also a number of great tools (ok, toys) in the Lego Education booth. As the representative was explaining the ways in which the tools could be used to teach children how to interact with technology and how they can learn both hardware and software concepts by building movable, controllable robots, I have to admit I wasn’t paying full attention to everything he said; I just wanted to play with the toys. These were definitely not the Lego bricks that I grew up with.
One other interesting thing was the completion of the College Model Design Competition. Teams of freshman and sophomore engineering students were tasked to design and build a “Sustainable Forester” robot, which should be capable of harvesting six red dowels (representing dead trees) while ignoring six green dowels (representing live trees). The robots had to operate in an 8-ft by 8-ft area, as shown below, and move along a predetermined route that passed 12 dowels randomly placed along the route. The successes and failures of each team’s design as it traversed the track were interesting to observe. One of the students shared his experiences in the development process, echoing the sentiment of the many other folks-he, too, wanted a better oscilloscope.
Lucas commented:
7th sem also involves the core paper of stllteiae communication which is not given in the above list of papers,please include that paper to be useful for us,but it is very useful for us for preparing thanks a lot
RK commented:
Design theory - circuit design on paper - Spice simulation - build prototype and confirm with tools (e.g., scope, DVM, ...). That's how you turn someone into a good engineer!
Retired Engineer commented:
I find most of these comments astounding. Engineering in a capitalist system isn't about reinventing the wheel, it is about moving forward. Deny an engineer tools and he'll engineer just fine but he won't produce a competitive design. What world are these students supposed to be preparing for?
Mredison commented:
TOOLS! Kid need access to tools and materials - tin snips, files, hacksaws, hammers, drills, solder, nails
No scope commented:
"No scope, no logic ... no electronics... guess.. don't understand...". Sounds like that kind engineer doesn't understand electronics at all. You understand electronics from the basis. You can debug with only a multimeter, resistors and LEDs. What happened before the scope existed? Does the inventor of the scope needed one to debug his own ? How did inventions come to life, wasn't it guessing, trial & error and understood what happened based on that & accidental discoveries ?!
DP23 commented:
I agree that the emphasis should be on what and how the student engineers are learning, not necessarily on the tools they have. I think the author may have had some scope-bis since he works for Tek. My manager works with high school robotics students and said that one thing the kids have had to learn is to allow for test and debug time in their schedule, that their HW and SW may not always work completely the first time.
Eric Ott commented:
This is the type of education opportunity we need to promote younger scientist. It's not about why they need o scopes. It's about how we can promote science and achieve more as humans with less. Also it reduces thumb fatigue from gaming
Eric Ott
Dave H commented:
This is an odd discussion. Legos, used doing the things documented, do not require tools to debug. After that, the scope is the single most useful tool a working engineer has available. More useful with logic channels. Even more with FFT capability. That's reality. Resourcefulness is definitely important, but in the creation of the design, not the tools. The tools need to be well understood and act as extensions of your mind.
Allan Johnson commented:
At DeVry Online, we don't have the opportunity of going to the school lab, we buy our own. In a way, this teaches me more respect for the little lab I have. And gratitude for Tektronix for making an inexpensive personal scope that still connects to a computer. By the way I started with an EICO kit scope I built from RCA Institutes long ago.
Scott H commented:
Amen to what Andy T said! I have noticed over the years--in ANY field of study---that the greatest creativity (and that annoying buzz word, innovation) emerged from a _lack_ of exactly what is needed, or in other words, resourcefulness. Getting by with only what is readily available--getting the job done--with only what is available takes more smarts and creativity than having just what you need.
I am certainly not saying that 'scopes in student labs is overkill. But if *not* having them is keeping kids from pursuing engineering, then maybe engineering isn't for them.
Mixed-Signal Engineer commented:
No oscilloscope and no logic analyzer means no debugging. No debugging means no real-world electronics product. When something electronic does not work and neither tool is used to understand the problem, a guess is forever just a guess - no progress is possible, and how is any kid supposed to get interested in this? The person who is or will be an engineer will get the tools and go find out what is really happening, track down the root cause, propose more than one way to fix it, choose the best approach, do it, and check again with the same tools to see if things get better. Has anyone who commented above built a real-world electronics product? As for interaction with engineer, what the kid does not is a engineer for a baby sitter. Lend the kid who yearns to fish the fishing rod and access to books (and internet). The rest he/she will more than happy to discover for himself/herself.
Insane commented:
Pardon me, does anyone have any Gray Poupon?
RF Austin commented:
The American Society of Engineering Education meets in Vancouver BC?! Did British Columbia become the 51st state? What did I miss? :-)
Tom M commented:
why would you need an oscilloscope? Children need interaction to engineer. that's the true value of activities like these.
Karen Karen commented:
I've only been surprised by the lack of engineering activity amongst kids.
Andy T commented:
The point of these "toys" is that the "children" don't need an oscilloscope, AT ALL, to build some amazing machine functionality using the limited materials and tools in a specified kit of parts and software.
A better oscilloscope does not build a better machine - in fact, one of the essential engineering skills needing to be taught is RESOURCEFULNESS and learning by trial and error, not whining or opening a wallet easily when it comes to problem solving. For engineering educational purposes, a silver spoon is something to make good electrical contacts with, nothing more.
