Survey for EE students

[Qacer]

Hello EE students,

I am curious about your school's circuits / electronics lab. I would like to know the setup, the type of experiments that you have, equipment, and any other interesting aspects of it like what does your instructor do differently to make things interesting.

If you have time, I would also like the following info:

Name of school:
Lab website:
Syllabus:
Lab highlights:
Class rating from 1 (worst) to 10 (best):


Thanks!

 

[Analog]

Originally posted by: Qacer
Hello EE students,

I am curious about your school's circuits / electronics lab. I would like to know the setup, the type of experiments that you have, equipment, and any other interesting aspects of it like what does your instructor do differently to make things interesting.

If you have time, I would also like the following info:

Name of school:
Lab website:
Syllabus:
Lab highlights:
Class rating from 1 (worst) to 10 (best):


Thanks!

I teach EE, and I was wondering why you are asking this?

 

[EyeMWing]

Originally posted by: yellowfiero

Originally posted by: Qacer
Hello EE students,

I am curious about your school's circuits / electronics lab. I would like to know the setup, the type of experiments that you have, equipment, and any other interesting aspects of it like what does your instructor do differently to make things interesting.

If you have time, I would also like the following info:

Name of school:
Lab website:
Syllabus:
Lab highlights:
Class rating from 1 (worst) to 10 (best):


Thanks!

I teach EE, and I was wondering why you are asking this?

He needs ideas for where he's going to spend his next 4 years, methinks.

 

[Oscar1613]

Name of school: LSU
Lab website: text
Syllabus: see above
Lab highlights: electronics I lab was easy. electronics II lab was a pain in the ass. only finished 1 lab the entire semester, mostly because of the introduction of the new, pointless, and sh!tty NI ELVIS virtual instrument system. this is basically the protoboard hooked up to a computer that uses software instruments... good b/c you can create your own specialized instruments (which we never did because it was way above our level obviously), but downside is it requires A/D sampling, which limits the freq response to ~35kHz and things dont work like they're supposed to anymore
Class rating from 1 (worst) to 10 (best):
elec I: 9
elect II: 5 (would be higher if we didnt have to use that stupid virtual instrument crap)

 

[Semidevil]

when I was an ee student.

lab 1 was the hardest to weed the students out. the class was 1x per week, and being 5 hours, the teacher would lecture 2 to 3 hours, and we would do lab for the rest, while he goes out to smoke or something.

we learned the scope, and the various meters, and just the basics. we did like 1 small lab per week, using the breadboard/resistors/voltmeter/scope.

score = 1.

lab 2, I heard, was the easiest of them all.

lab 3, had a 30 page paper due every week.

lab 4 and 5 were the digital design lab, so you got to build cool stuff.

 

[slpaulson]

I can't complain about my labs.

ECE170: Learned how to use Digital Multimeter, AC and DC Power sources, and Digital Oscilliscope. Expirments were mostly simple stuff with Ohms law, thevanin equivalents ect.

ECE270: Expansion on ECE170. Did RLC circuits, filters, and opamps.

ECE351: Digital Logic Lab. Programmed a fpga with gate logic. Basically an expansion on our Digital System Fundamentals class, but we put our designs on an fpga.

All these labs were pretty good, I'd probably rate ECE170 and ECE270 an 8, and ECE351 a 9. ECE351 had a good amount of outside work, while the others didn't. ECE351 class time mostly consisted of just putting our design on the fpga board and doing some testing.

Anyways I go to Wisconsin - Madison. I can get course webpages later, but I have to go now.

 

[Qacer]

Originally posted by: yellowfiero
I teach EE, and I was wondering why you are asking this?

I teach a circuits lab and we're thinking of revising the manual. That is why I'm trying to survey other universities' labs and find out which process works best for the students. We are actually thinking of utilizing Elvis for pre-lab work.

Thanks for the input everyone!

 

[Semidevil]

I have a suggestion. I"m not sure if it is same in all universities, but in mine, they have a class on circuits, and then, comes a seperate class for the lab work. Dont make them co-requisites.....make the circuits class a prerequisite for the lab.

From what I see, if students take the lab class and the circuit class at the same time, students do poorly on the labs, because they dont have a good foundation in the circuit class yet, and don't know how the lab works.

and fail.....

 

[Qacer]

Originally posted by: Semidevil
I have a suggestion. I"m not sure if it is same in all universities, but in mine, they have a class on circuits, and then, comes a seperate class for the lab work. Dont make them co-requisites.....make the circuits class a prerequisite for the lab.

From what I see, if students take the lab class and the circuit class at the same time, students do poorly on the labs, because they dont have a good foundation in the circuit class yet, and don't know how the lab works.

and fail.....

Circuits is a pre-req in our school. The problem is that many students coming out of Circuits class still don't get a good grasp of the theory presented in the lecture. For instance, I gave the following diagnostic quiz question on the first day:

"If two resistors are in series and R1 has 10 times more resistance than R2, which resistor has more current going through it?"

I was expecting everyone to state that they should be seeing the same amount of current. Surprisingly, there were a few who missed out on it. Tsk.

 

[Goosemaster]

1. My old University (Drexel) focused on basic Circuitry in the first Electronics class. That said, there were a menagerie (you heard me) of holes in the text that made life quite ocnfusing for anyone but the avid Electronics guy. It was a mix of theory and application with an 80% emphasis in application as the class was basically a lab. I nteh end, it was a very interesting program that allowed the studetns to visualize electronics later on, but the text was somewhat dry and confusing at times. That said, even tough I was anything but an excellent student at that school, I feel my judgement of their program is fair.

2. Currently, the community college I am attending starts out with a basic circuits course that is all theory. We get into the meat of it quite quickly, but only after assuring ourselves that we have firmly grasped the basics. There is no application until the second semester where a lab is a co-req, which even the professors disagree with. Even so, I am finding quite advantageous to learn everything correctly and in great detail even if the application is no where to be seen.

Syllabus( for the extended learning version of the class): http://eli.nvcc.edu/pdf/egr251sy504.PDF

Ranking: so Far it is a 10..just started two weeks ago.

 

[funggorgor]

Name of school: university of hongkong
equipment: well, nothing special, CRO , signal generator, meters , blah
Lab website: http://www.eee.hku.hk/~ugsnews...et/level1-lab-list.htm
what does your instructor do differently to make things interesting? no, they don't

 

[Semidevil]

Originally posted by: funggorgor
Name of school: university of hongkong
equipment: well, nothing special, CRO , signal generator, meters , blah
Lab website: http://www.eee.hku.hk/~ugsnews...et/level1-lab-list.htm
what does your instructor do differently to make things interesting? no, they don't

wow, hardcore man...it's triple e, not double-e....haha