Design Patterns for Teaching Type Checking in a Compiler Construction Course

A course in compiler construction seeks to develop an understanding of well-defined fundamental theory and typically involves the production of a language processor. In a graduate degree in software engineering, the development of a compiler contributes significantly to the developer's comprehension of the practical application of theoretical concepts. Different formal notations are commonly used to define type systems, and some of them are used to teach the semantic analysis phase of language processing. In the traditional approach, attribute grammars are probably the most widely used ones. This paper shows how object-oriented design patterns represented in unified modeling language (UML) can be used to both teach type systems and develop the semantic analysis phase of a compiler. The main benefit of this approach is two-fold: better comprehension of theoretical concepts because of the use of notations known by the students (UML diagrams), and improvement of software engineering skills for the development of a complete language processor.     

Biomedical engineering in China. A look at the growth of the BMESociety, and advanced education

In 1978 the Chinese Institute of Electronics asked Dr Qin to organise the Chinese Biomedical Engineering Society. Looking back on 14 years of the Society's history, 13 conferences have been held, and more than 600 technical papers presented. Student paper competitions stimulated students and young investigators to attend the conference and join the Society. The authors also discuss formal BME education including accreditation and curricula. The universities which have BME programs can be mainly classified into two categories: (1) universities of science and engineering, (2) universities of medical science. The curricula can also be divided into: (1) engineering oriented, and (2) clinically oriented. Most engineering oriented curricula are based on electronic engineering around a central task of instrumentation design. Besides the engineering courses, basic anatomy and physiology are offered for the purpose of communication with physicians. Most clinical oriented curricula are executed in medical schools, they are based on the applications of medical instruments and computers, but the hospital internship is a special required subject. Todays typical BME faculty differs quite significantly from the faculties that began the BME effort in China. Members tend to be interdiciplinarians, capable of understanding a broad range of areas. A significant number are bearers of graduate degrees, both bachelors and masters, from both inside and outside of China. Nearly 300 students are presently enrolled in the country's biomedical engineering programs     

Using contests to teach design to EE juniors

Most electrical engineering programs have a capstone design course, but lack a suitable design experience in the junior year. This makes the capstone course very difficult for students and compromises its pedagogical aims. A good design experience offers opportunities for learning to identify key operational concepts, to identify and remedy procedural and factual knowledge deficits, and to exercise judgment. The design problem should be open-ended, moderately difficult, and common to all groups. We use a design contest as a vehicle for teaching design in the junior-year analog electronics course, in lieu of conventional laboratories. Students design and build analog circuitry to autonomously control a small robotic vehicle. The contest culminates in a competitive tournament. Students' questionnaire responses indicate that the contest is a useful learning tool, increasing interest in electrical engineering and well worth the time spent. They indicate that contests are preferable to conventional labs for learning and understanding course material, for motivating them, and for providing an engineering experience     

Interactive online tutorial assistance for a first programming course

Web-based instruction shows great promise toward enriching the student learning experience. One particular area of interest is providing tutorial material and practice problems online so that classroom lecture time can be better utilized. However, the time and cost to develop full tutoring systems can be prohibitive. The project presented in this paper shows that low-cost online modules can be developed to complement existing course delivery methods. The key to the design is limiting the type of tutoring and focusing on instructional challenges involving the repetition of concepts that are introduced in the course lectures. For introductory programming courses, these challenges primarily involve the difficulties inherent in learning the syntax of a particular programming language and gaining sufficient familiarity with programming concepts, such as loops, conditional statements, and simple algorithms. The set of online modules was developed to reduce the need for repetition of these concepts during lectures. Thus, students benefit as they can gain knowledge and comprehension of these concepts at their own pace as they actively engage the tutorials and self-check exercises. The modules were used as an enhancement for an introductory programming course taught in C++ to first-year university students, some of whom had little or no programming experience. Feedback from students and instructors shows that the modules were useful and aided student learning.     

Introducing HIV/AIDS education into the electrical engineering curriculum at the University of Pretoria

This paper describes how HIV/AIDS education is being introduced into the curriculum of the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Computer Engineering at the University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. Third- and fourth-year students were provided with an HIV/AlDS Educational CD developed at the university. Their knowledge of the subject was tested via two quizzes-one written before they were exposed to the material on the CD and one after. In addition, a mathematical HIV/AIDS model is being incorporated into a third-year control systems course. This model is used to illustrate standard control systems engineering concepts, such as linearization, system stability, feedback, and dynamic compensation. This paper is an example of how topical nonengineering material can effectively be made part of a high-level undergraduate engineering course. Students benefit not only from the topical nature of the subject, but also from an improved understanding of control engineering concepts which can be applied to many different fields.     

Introduction for Freshmen to Embedded Systems Using LEGO Mindstorms

The purpose of the course presented here is to introduce freshmen to embedded systems using LEGO Mindstorms, under an ANSI-C programming environment. The students build their own LEGO robots, make programs for them using ANSI-C, and operate them. By creating these LEGO robots, the students become more motivated, learning the basic concepts of embedded systems and how these concepts can be applied to real world problems.      

Powerful software to learn by [power systems CAI]

Many students have trouble understanding the concepts and mastering the analytical skills required in their first power systems course. This becomes apparent in subsequent courses when they falter in applying those concepts and skills. They may lose interest in power systems, and may drop out. Our overall project was aimed at developing educational facilities with an integrated laboratory for a power systems course. To this end, a software package called PowerGraf was developed to help students learn and to make the subject more interesting. It is an interactive and comprehensive software package for supplementing what is learned in the classroom, the laboratory and in the student's self-study. It is also an excellent demonstration tool. The package is truly designed for students with little understanding of power systems     

A sophomore capstone course in measurement and automated data acquisition

A novel multidisciplinary course (Engineering Applications III) was developed that integrates knowledge gained and tools acquired from the introductory freshman circuits, mechanics, and C/C++ courses. It is built around the concepts associated with automated data acquisition systems. This three-quarter-hour, laboratory-intensive course uses a suite of data acquisition equipment located in the computer aided teaching laboratory at the University of Denver, Denver, CO. The presentation format is two lectures and one three-hour laboratory per week. The lectures are designed to cover material that directly supports the laboratories. Early in the course, laboratories explore the subsystems of an automated data acquisition system. The students then learn the operation of a PCMCIA (personal computer memory card international association) data acquisition card, write C/C++ programs to control the data acquisition, learn the operation of analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, and learn the use of the C/C++ commands provided for controlling these subsystems. These concepts are introduced while doing typical experiments dealing with the measurement of temperature and strain and the evaluation of a temperature controller.     

Virtual instruments in undergraduate biomedical engineering laboratories

It is anticipated that many undergraduate biomedical engineering (BME) students will seek jobs in industry following graduation. Therefore, it is imperative that BME programs establish a learning environment that exposes students to modem tools and equipment that best prepare them for an industrial setting. BME laboratory courses using PC-based virtual instruments can prepare students for real-world experience with minimal cost and risk. This article details various approaches for incorporating undergraduate BME laboratories in the curriculum and the use of virtual instruments. In particular, we discuss the motivations for and approaches to implementing virtual instruments and also describe a number of virtual instrument applications.     

A case study on blackout restoration as an educational tool

New exercises are needed to stimulate interest in power engineering, especially providing links to the other areas of electrical engineering such as computers or controls. While de-regulation has revitalized many technical challenges in power system engineering, power faculty members need updated resources to interest students in power engineering as a career. This paper describes a case study developed at Michigan Technological University (MTU). This exercise provides an educational opportunity for electrical engineering students at the sophomore/junior level to expand their knowledge about power systems in general, and more specifically power system blackout restoration. Besides offering explanations of concepts, this case study uses the dynamic environment of HTML to help create links for more detailed and often more visual representations for key concepts. The end goals for the students are (1) to complete open-ended exercises to see how they can immediately apply their newly acquired knowledge, and (2) an introduction to advanced power system subjects     

Fault tolerant ballistic missile defense: defining constraints

It is argued that a fault-tolerant ballistic missile defense (BMD) system must not increase the probability of accidental nuclear exchanges. This requirement is used to define three constraints for BMD systems: the deployment of any BMD system must be accompanied by deliberate steps to reduce the responsiveness of offensive nuclear weapons by all sides; a deliberate and assured lag time should be built into offensive nuclear systems to allow for real-time assessments of any BMD actions prior to the release of any offensive nuclear weapons; and BMD systems should not have the capacity to cause rapid losses to opposing BME system components or be vulnerable to rapid losses from opposing BMD systems. BMD efforts in both the United States and the Soviet Union are not likely to meet these constraints and therefore should not be considered fault-tolerant. A more limited BMD system is posited as a solution     

A laboratory course in real-time software for the control of dynamic systems

This paper describes a laboratory course in real-time software for dynamic systems control. In the first part of the course, real-time concepts employed by modern real-time operating systems are taught with laboratory assignments. In the second part, students are required to write real-time software for dynamic systems control using the concepts that they learned in the first part. Real-time programming is usually avoided in teaching a feedback control laboratory course, since it has generally been considered difficult. However, student evaluation results for this course show that real-time programming can be successfully included in a feedback control laboratory course. From this course, students are able to obtain working knowledge of both real-time concepts and real-time programming for dynamic systems control.     

Cache Energy Control for Storage: Power System Integration and Education Based on Analogies Derived From Computer Engineering

Energy storage is an enabling technology for power system integration of renewable sources, while data storage enables computer system integration. In this paper, a functional analogy relating energy and data storage is derived. Battery or hydrogen storage can provide large energy capacity similar to a hard disk providing large data capacity. Supercapacitors or flywheels provide fast and frequent access to cache energy similar to the computer's RAM providing fast and frequent access to data. In analogy to computer engineering, a cache control that coordinates the operation of a multilevel storage consisting of such complementary capacity and access-oriented storage technologies is designed. It is illustrated how for an industrial distributed energy system with renewable generation, local load, fueling station, and connections to the electricity and gas distribution networks, the cache control provides energy management to support a modular plug-and-play-like system integration. The benefit of the analogy in education is evaluated on a representative sample of electrical engineering students at the University of Washington. While familiar with computing, students do not typically have the same level of exposure to power engineering. The understanding of distributed energy systems concepts is shown to improve thanks to this bridging analogy between computer and power engineering.      

Development of Modified Nodal Analysis into a Pedagogical Tool

A presentation of the moified inodal anaysis (MNA) is made to students in an undergraduate course on circuit theory. This presentation improves students' understanding of the basic concepts of analysis and familiarizes them with the nature of techniques implementable on the computer. In addition, students are introduced to the basic theorems of circuit theory through the unifying framework of MNA.     

The Signals and Systems Concept Inventory

The signal processing community needs quantitative standardized tools to assess student learning in order to improve teaching methods and satisfy accreditation requirements. The Signals and Systems Concept Inventory (SSCI) is a 25-question multiple-choice exam designed to measure students' understanding of fundamental concepts taught in standard signals and systems curricula. When administered as a pre- and postcourse assessment, the SSCI measures the gain in conceptual understanding as a result of instruction. This paper summarizes the three-year development of this new assessment instrument and presents results obtained from testing with a pool of over 900 students from seven schools. Initial findings from the SSCI study show that students in traditional lecture courses master approximately 20% of the concepts they do not know prior to the start of the course. Other results highlight the most common student misconceptions and quantify the correlation between signals and systems and prerequisite courses.     

Integrating optical and electrical engineering courses

The expansion in the fields of optical engineering and optoelectronics has made it essential to introduce optical engineering concepts into undergraduate courses and curricula. Because of limits on the number of course requirements for the B.S. degree, it is not clear how these topics should be introduced without replacing some of the traditional requirements. This paper demonstrates how optical engineering concepts can be easily presented as an integral part of electrical engineering subjects, with a minimal amount of replacement, while enhancing the depth and understanding of both fields. Courses such as linear signals and systems, electricity and magnetism, and electronics which traditionally represent the core requirements of the undergraduate electrical engineering curriculum contain subjects that have direct correlations with optical engineering concepts. The major changes that are needed are the creation of textbooks that contain concepts and examples in areas of both optical and electrical engineering and some relearning and familiarization on the part of instructors. This approach allows for a fresh look at courses being offered in electrical engineering, while providing the necessary background in optical engineering for students     

Curriculum development in microelectromechanical systems inmechanical engineering

Curriculum development in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) in the Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) Department at the University of Michigan is presented. A course curriculum structure that integrates both mechanical and electrical engineering courses is proposed for mechanical engineering students. The proposed curriculum starts from undergraduate study and finishes at the Ph.D. level. Two new graduate-level MEMS courses are proposed: “Introduction to MEMS” for senior undergraduate students and entry-level graduate students and “Advanced MEMS” for graduate students. The first course has been experimentally taught at the University of Michigan for three years and the class assessments are summarized and analyzed in this paper. It is clear from the student responses that they are interested in taking courses in emerging technologies such as MEMS and more courses in the MEMS area should be offered. Future MEMS curriculum development and a new MEMS course for undergraduate-level students in the college of engineering are discussed