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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Work-In-Progress: Implementing Sophomore Cornerstone Courses In Electrical And Computer Engineering, Branimir Pejcinovic, Melinda Holtzman, Phillip Wong
Work-In-Progress: Implementing Sophomore Cornerstone Courses In Electrical And Computer Engineering, Branimir Pejcinovic, Melinda Holtzman, Phillip Wong
Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
Many engineering programs have significant project-based courses in the freshman and senior years. The project component in our freshman year-long sequence evolves from minimally structured projects, like designing and building Rube-Goldberg contraptions, to more complex microcontroller-based projects where formal tools for teamwork and project management are introduced. However, we do not yet enforce strict adherence to procedures and processes in the freshman year. This is unlike the senior capstone, where the expectation is that students will not only be familiar with these methods but will use them effectively throughout their projects. This presents an obvious problem: what happens in the …
Introducing Cornerstone Courses Into Electrical And Computer Engineering Curriculum, Branimir Pejcinovic
Introducing Cornerstone Courses Into Electrical And Computer Engineering Curriculum, Branimir Pejcinovic
Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
Almost all engineering programs have some form of final, culminating design experience, which is typically taught as a senior year capstone design course. Due to ABET requirements these are team and project based. Many programs will also have projects interspersed among required and elective courses, but these tend to be overrepresented in freshman year. We have recently introduced a set of courses during sophomore year that mimic our approach to capstone courses and provide authentic engineering design experience. These so-called cornerstone courses provide scaffolding by introducing all of the components of teamwork and design process but in a less formal …
Board 63: Work In Progress: Adapting Scrum Project Management To Ece Courses, Branimir Pejcinovic, Phillip Wong, Robert B. Bass
Board 63: Work In Progress: Adapting Scrum Project Management To Ece Courses, Branimir Pejcinovic, Phillip Wong, Robert B. Bass
Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
Scrum is a popular form of Agile project management. Its applications now include diverse areas such as software development, engineering, urban planning, and law. Scrum has also been used in software engineering educational programs, but its use in other engineering education is lagging. Within our electrical and computer engineering program, we introduced Scrum to help students improve their teamwork efficacy in projects and courses. Earlier, we have presented some initial experiences and observations when implementing Scrum in ECE courses. In this paper we will elaborate on how Scrum is applied across different years and how we scaffold student learning. Scrum …
Challenges In Designing A Mentorship Program For Electrical Engineering Freshmen, Branimir Pejcinovic, Melinda Holtzman
Challenges In Designing A Mentorship Program For Electrical Engineering Freshmen, Branimir Pejcinovic, Melinda Holtzman
Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
This Work in Progress Innovative Practice Paper addresses three challenges we face when teaching freshmen: a) how to present a wide variety of sub-fields in electrical engineering, b) how to establish the relevance of electrical engineering to things they care about, and c) how to relate electrical engineering to students' experiences. We are attempting to address these through a mentorship program involving recent alumni working with teams of freshman electrical engineering students. Mentors are expected to: (i) come to class and speak about their job experience, (ii) meet with their teams early in the term to help them get started …
Assessing Scrum Project Management And Teamwork In Electrical And Computer Engineering Courses, Branimir Pejcinovic, Robert B. Bass, Phillip Wong
Assessing Scrum Project Management And Teamwork In Electrical And Computer Engineering Courses, Branimir Pejcinovic, Robert B. Bass, Phillip Wong
Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
Teamwork and project management are essential skills for engineering students, as recognized in the proposed new ABET topic area 7. Our team of instructors exposes students to project management techniques at multiple levels within our undergraduate ECE program. By learning project management early and practicing it often, students improve their teamwork efficacy in projects, courses, and in their future careers. Scrum is a cyclical project management technique commonly used in high-tech industries. Scrum provides a framework that facilitates teamwork through an adaptable and incremental process. Our variant of scrum is tailored to students working on engineering projects in a higher-education …
Evolution Of An Introductory Electrical Engineering And Programming Course, Branimir Pejcinovic, Phillip Wong
Evolution Of An Introductory Electrical Engineering And Programming Course, Branimir Pejcinovic, Phillip Wong
Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
Our first year electrical engineering sequence includes two courses that involve programming and hardware interfacing. ECE 102 deals with engineering problem solving and MATLAB, while ECE 103 introduces C programming. We use MATLAB both as a problem solving tool and as an introduction to programming. Students utilize MATLAB to control a data acquisition device, which enables more realistic team-based projects that combine problem-solving, programming, and interfacing. As is widely recognized, these types of courses are important and difficult to teach. We identified areas that needed improvement in ECE 102: a) outdated lecture format, b) not enough timely feedback, c) insufficient …
Project-Based Rf/Microwave Education, Richard L. Campbell, Branimir Pejcinovic
Project-Based Rf/Microwave Education, Richard L. Campbell, Branimir Pejcinovic
Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations
Immediate application of learned fundamentals to laboratory work is standard practice in Electrical Engineering Education, but student explorations of basic RF/Microwave circuits at the transistor-electromagnetics level are particularly challenging. This paper describes an interconnected set of basic electromagnetic and transistor-level RF/Microwave modules that may be assembled into a short range wireless link or modulated scatterer radar system. These Analog/RF/Microwave building blocks are used across the Senior and Graduate Level curriculum.