DESIGNING AN INTRODUCTORY FIRST-YEAR COURSE FOR AN ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING PROGRAM

M. Medina (2023). DESIGNING AN INTRODUCTORY FIRST-YEAR COURSE FOR AN ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING PROGRAM. 461-469.

2023 19th International CDIO Conference, NTNU, Norway

CDIO 2023 Proceedings (102).pdf

We present the design and evolution of our current first-year introductory course for the Electronics Engineering program of the School of Engineering at the University of Concepción, Chile based on CDIO Standard 4. For the last eight years, we have gathered student reactions and opinions about the course, recording how its different activities have impacted both their interest in and knowledge of their chosen field of study. These activities have changed throughout the years and have included, in no particular order, talks by faculty members about their research, presentations by practicing electronics engineers about their day-to-day jobs, visits to local industries, individual and small-group programming projects, latter-year student presentations about their internships, junior and senior engineers and alumni talking about their first jobs, and others. Evidence gathered through yearly surveys show that students appreciate the course as they enjoy working in small-group programming projects and hands-on laboratories and also because it gives them the chance to meet and work with their classmates. This was particularly important for the 2020 and 2021 cohorts, when all class activities migrated to virtual platforms. Thus, we have designed a three-part 17-week long course. A six-week college induction course is followed by lab sessions where students work in small groups on electronics programming projects using microcontroller boards such as Arduino Uno, BBC Microbit and/or Raspberry Pi. These lab sessions are interspersed with presentations by practicing junior and senior electronics engineers, mostly alumni, talking about their first jobs and current work. Finally, the course’s last weeks are reserved for student poster presentations about the electronics engineering field. Student opinions about this new course design have been encouraging, as it has been well received by the incoming student class.

Authors (New):

Mario Medina

Pages:

461-469

Affiliations:

University of Concepcion, Chile

Keywords:

Introductory course

Student Satisfaction

Electronics Engineering

CDIO Standard 2

CDIO standard 4

Year:

2023

Reference:

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DESIGNING AN INTRODUCTORY FIRST-YEAR COURSE FOR AN ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING PROGRAM

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DESIGNING AN INTRODUCTORY FIRST-YEAR COURSE FOR AN ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING PROGRAM

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