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Engineering

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

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Electrical engineering -- Study and teaching (Higher)

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Work-In-Progress: Implementing Sophomore Cornerstone Courses In Electrical And Computer Engineering, Branimir Pejcinovic, Melinda Holtzman, Phillip Wong Jun 2020

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 …


Board 63: Work In Progress: Adapting Scrum Project Management To Ece Courses, Branimir Pejcinovic, Phillip Wong, Robert B. Bass Jun 2019

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 …


Assessing Scrum Project Management And Teamwork In Electrical And Computer Engineering Courses, Branimir Pejcinovic, Robert B. Bass, Phillip Wong Jun 2018

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 Jun 2017

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 …