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MIT Introductory EE Goes Hands-On
pioneer writes "MIT is looking to replace its introductory core EE (electrical engineering) curriculum with more hands-on classes. MIT Professors Abelson and Sussman discuss the new class, which replaces equations with actual circuit building, tours of electrical plants, and classes taught by famous professors."
Jack (the professor) said that one of his greatest fears as a new parent was that his child would stab a knife or scissors into an electrical socket. While the kid was an infant the situation was manageable, but eventually the kid was big enough to work around the little plastic plugs and other baby protectors.
So Jack rigged up a wall socket so that it was hooked to a battery instead of the house current. Then he gave the kid a knife and told him to stick the knife into the wall socket. The kid did as he was told and received the mildest of electric shocks. Thereafter the child had a healthy fear of electrical sockets.
Miko O'Sullivan
I thought it was normal to actually *build* circuits in electrical engineering since my school required it. It wasn't until after graduation that I talked to other recent graduates and found out that my school had been the exception and not the rule. It certainly helped me get a job when I could refer to specific problems I had designing and building say, a 100W audio amplifier (just one of many projects), rather than just talking about the theoretical aspects of such a design. I also discovered that my school held a high reputation in industry because of this. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts and a the retirement of a few key professors, it looks like they will (or possibly already have) abandoned many of these hands-on labs.
I got my EE degree from Boise State University, hardly the technological powerhouse of MIT's caliber, but one thing that concerned the faculty in the College of Engineering was the need to not just attract students who wanted to major in engineering, but also to retain them once they started the program.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or an engineer) to realize that two years of core engineering classes full of theory, math and seemingly non-applicable ideas is pretty damn boring to an awful lot of people. Although you may disagree, I think that it is not just important, but critical to see some sort of practical engineering examples. Sure, I got a lab with my physics class (I made a telescope, charted magnetic flux lines and measured acceleration, etc.) and there was a chemistry lab (oh boy, we made Slime). There was even a rudimentary circuits lab that taught us something about discrete passive devices. But the one class that was the "hook" that worked to cause most of the borderline (as in not sure if they want to continue in engineering) students to keep on was the Introduction to Engineering course.
This was a course that featured a topic from a different engineering discipline each week: Electrical, Civil and Mechanical. The one hour lecture by a different professor from the field each week was followed by two three hour labs of projects related to that topic.
Sure, we were just taking Calculus I at the time and no, we didn't know Kirchoff's laws. We couldn't describe a system with differential equations, but there are a ton of things that a student can do that involve intuitive engineering knowledge that don't require any more science than simply understanding how something works - not why it works...that comes later.
At the end of the semester, the "capstone" project was, as I recall, a car that had to navigate away from obstacles using IR sensors. Yes, a lot of stuff was prepackaged, but the experience was valuable in that it showed the application of ideas and served as a way to tide us over those first couple of years when hours of math, physics and chemistry threatened to send us all screaming down the halls.
I should point out that, at least at Boise State, the College of Engineering has a very high graduation rate. I don't recall any EE student who started their freshman year with me who didn't go all the way to the end and graduate. Obviously there is a lot that goes into a high graduation rate, including the dedication and determination of the student as well as the quality and committment of the professors, but it seems to me that something works at BSU.
Also, every one of those graduates who took the Fundamentals exam (a prerequisite for becoming a Professional Engineer) passed. Did EE120 make the difference? I can't say, but I do know that it was one of the courses that I took that really sticks in my mind because it showed early on that the things that we were learning and were going to learn had practical applications.
-h-