Introducing an industry oriented graduate course: Testing of digital systems
According to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), for more than four decades, the semiconductor industry has distinguished itself by the rapid pace of improvements in its products. However, the cost of the increased functionality of components, circuits, and systems, is the requirement of more verification and test of the electronic products. In current projects, verification engineers outnumber designers, with the ratio reaching two or three to one for the most complex designs. Additionally, the present globalization trends and needs are driving the universities worldwide, to find new avenues in the programs that they are offering, to be attractive to their prospective students. Addressing the above mentioned matters, an industry oriented graduate course “Testing of Digital Systems” was created and offered for the first time in the academic year 2009–2010 at Rose Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Indiana. The paper presents the rationale, integration of the new course in the ECE curricula, description of the course and laboratory activities developed around an industrial grade Automatic Test Equipment, preliminary assessment plans and conclusions.
Development of technical skills in Electrical Power Engineering students: A case study of Power Electronics as a Key Course
Technical skills are one of the attributes, an engineering student must attain by the time of graduation, as per recommended by Engineering Accreditation Council (EAC). This paper describes the development of technical skills, Programme Outcome (PO) number 5, in students taking the Bachelor of Electrical Power Engineering (BEPE) programme in Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN). Seven courses are identified to address the technical skills development. The course outcomes (CO) of the courses are designed to instill the relevant technical skills with suitable laboratory activities. Formative and summative assessments are carried out to gauge students’ acquisition of the skills. Finally, to measure the attainment of the technical skills, key course concept is used. The concept has been implemented since 2013, focusing on improvement of the programme instead of the cohort. From the PO attainment analysis method, three different levels of PO attainment can be calculated: from the programme level, down to the course and student levels. In this paper, the attainment of the courses mapped to PO5 is measured. It is shown that Power Electronics course, which is the key course for PO5, has a strong attainment at above 90%. PO5 of other six courses are also achieved. As a conclusion, by embracing outcome-based education (OBE), the BEPE programme has a sound method to develop technical psychomotor skills in the degree students.
Teaching hardware description and verification
Since 1999, the formal methods group of the Department of Computing Science at Chalmers University of Technology has given a course on hardware description and verification (http://www.cs.chalmers.se/Cs/Education/Courses/svh/). The course focuses on the use of hardware description languages in design, and on functional verification using simulation, assertion monitoring and formal methods. The course is part of an international masters programme in dependable computer systems, although currently the majority of the students are from the 3rd and 4th years of the Chalmers undergraduate programmes in electronics or computer engineering. About 35 students pass the course each year. The emphasis in the course is on practical approaches to hardware description and verification, with students gaining hands-on experience of both commercial and academic tools. In addition, the important concepts and algorithms underlying formal verification are taught. The fact that the course manages to reflect both advanced industrial practice and state of the art research is, we feel, its major strength. The paper emphasises the benefits that the course has brought to our research group.