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Paper ID #6709
Exploiting a Disruptive Technology to Actively Engage Students
in the Learn-ing Process
Dr. John M Robertson, Arizona State University, Polytechnic
campus
John Robertson, PhD, is a Professor in the Engineering
Department at Arizona State University Poly-technic where he
specializes in instrumentation and semiconductor technology. His
research interestsinclude process control and its application to
educational development. He was formerly an executivewith Motorola
and now participates in many senior technical training programs
with local companies.
Prof. Kathleen Meehan, Virginia Tech
Kathleen Meehan is presently an Associate Professor in the
Bradley Department of Electrical and Com-puter Engineering at
Virginia Tech. Her previous academic positions were at at the
University of Denverand West Virginia University. Prior to moving
in academia, she was employed at Lytel, Inc., PolaroidCorporation,
and Biocontrol Technology. She received her B.S.E.E. from Manhattan
College and herM.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois -
Urbana/Champaign under the direction of Prof. NickHolonyak, Jr. Her
areas of research include design of optoelectronic materials,
devices, and systems;optical spectroscopy; high heat load
packaging; and electrical engineering pedagogy.
Dr. Robert John Bowman, Rochester Institute of Technology
(COE)
Robert J. Bowman has held faculty positions at the University of
Utah, the University of Vermont, theUniversity of Rochester, and
Rochester Institute of Technology and has consulted or has held
engineer-ing positions with a number of companies. He was Director
of Analog and Mixed-Signal Engineeringat LSI Logic until 2001 and
then became Department Head of Electrical Engineering at RIT. Dr.
Bow-man is now Professor of Electrical Engineering and Lab Director
of the RIT Analog Devices IntegratedMicrosystems Laboratory. His
areas of interest include analog integrated circuit design and
technology,semiconductor device physics, and integrated
transducers. His current research work is concentrated onsmart MEMs
sensors, miniature near-field antennas, thin film acoustic cavity
resonators, and devices andcircuits fabricated in thin film,
crystalline silicon on glass.
Prof. Kenneth A Connor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Kenneth Connor is a professor in the Department of Electrical,
Computer, and Systems Engineering,where he teaches courses on
plasma physics, electromagnetics, electronics and instrumentation,
electricpower, and general engineering. His research involves
plasma physics, electromagnetics, photonics, en-gineering
education, diversity in the engineering workforce, and technology
enhanced learning. Sincejoining the Rensselaer faculty in 1974, he
has been continuously involved in research programs at suchplaces
as Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Universities of Texas and
Wisconsin in the U.S., Kyotoand Nagoya Universities in Japan, the
Ioffe Institute in Russia, and Kharkov Institute of Physics and
Tech-nology in Ukraine. He was ECSE Department Head from 2001-2008
and served on the board of the ECEDepartment Heads Association from
2003-2008. He is presently the Education Director for the
SMARTLIGHTING NSF ERC.
Mr. Douglas A Mercer, Analog Devices Inc.
Doug Mercer received the B.S.E.E degree from Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, in 1977. He has 35 yearsexperience in the
linear IC industry in the design and development of high resolution
and high speed dataconverter products. Since joining Analog Devices
in 1977 he has contributed directly or indirectly tomore than 30
commercial products. He holds 13 patents. He was a full time Analog
Devices employeeuntil 2009, the last 14 years as an ADI Fellow, the
highest level of technical contributor at ADI. Since2009 he has
transitioned to the role of Consulting Fellow at ADI working part
time, most recently in thearea of undergraduate EE education
outreach and development, principally as ADI’s point of contact
withRensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2013
Page 23.576.1
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Exploiting a Disruptive Technology to Actively Engage
Students in the Learning Process
Abstract
Once every decade or so, a disruptive technology appears that
has the potential to revolutionize
electrical and computer engineering (ECE) education. This paper
considers the impact of one of
the most recent examples: a USB-powered instrument called Analog
Discovery that is cheap
enough for students to own personally. Students are no longer
bound by the constraints of fixed
space, equipment, and schedules in their institution to conduct
experiments. Instructional
materials are posted for free and advice is provided by early
adopters, working engineers and
hobbyists in forums on the internet to simplify the adoption of
this pedagogical approach. The
paper outlines the experience of four universities with support
from three companies to exploit
this technology in ECE curricula. Assessment of hands-on
pedagogy shows that the approach
has very positive impact on the depth of understanding of
complex concepts. Effects are
particularly profound in the early years of a university program
and for underrepresented and
minority students or who have had a fractured educational
experience. Just as profound, is the
impact “hands-on learning” has on college engineering program
retention rates and students’
future employment opportunities. Experimenting and solving
problems in a hands-on
environment can provide a solid grounding in engineering
principles. More importantly, hands-
on learning with one of the various student learning tools is
just plain fun for faculty as well as
students. The paper also considers the potential for this
technology to seed a disruptive chain of
developments in higher education.
Introduction
Innovation is the lifeblood of productivity and competitiveness.
Nowhere has the impact been
more clearly demonstrated than in the application of digital
technology over the past four
decades. Following the relentless rhythm of Moore’s Law, it has
delivered a new technology
node every two years. New processors, memory and communications
circuits routinely offer
dramatic reductions in cost per function. Computer-linked
instrumentation is a latecomer to that
trend. However, a small commercially available module now offers
performance that is
comparable with the benchmark student workstation (signal
generator, oscilloscope and dual
voltage power supply) in a $100 package. This means that
students can buy their own lab and
experimental teaching is unshackled from the constraints and
schedules of on-campus facilities.
The development path and teaching applications that led to the
‘personal lab’ are outlined in the
next section. With a low-cost instrument, that experience can
now be widely deployed and the
paper reports on first results from four universities. The
changes are certainly innovative but will
they be disruptive? Innovation adds to productivity and the
range of applications but it only
Page 23.576.2
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becomes disruptive when new organizations are created to lead
and exploit the new technology
and they displace the old regime. The characteristic features of
disruptive change have been
analyzed at length. Christensen’s book1 provides a foundational
review and the scope is well-
covered in a recent National Academies workshop2. Both sources
emphasize that all disruptive
technology is innovative but only a small proportion of
innovative technology becomes
disruptive. There are many claimants and almost every week there
is an announcement of a new
development, especially in electronics, that is promised to
radically change the applications
world. The range and frequency of these claims create a strong
background noise level that
obscures the few trends that will eventually become established.
This is well-characterized by
the ‘hype-curve’3. Only a small proportion of innovations
achieve eventual success and of these,
a few will become disruptive and fundamentally change the ways
we operate.
The path to Discovery
Computer-controlled test systems have been available since the
late 70s but they have been
expensive relative to the typical budget for a student lab
workstation. An early approach was to
use the instrument controller as a server which can support
multiple remote users4. This
approach remains a very cost-effective way of giving many
students access to high-quality
automated instrumentation but it is constrained by having a
fixed set-up and therefore no hands-
on activity beyond manipulating data. It is analogous to the
generation of multi-user mainframe
computers. It has its place but instruments attached to personal
computers have demonstrated
more opportunities for teaching applications.
The Mobile Studio at RPI grew out of an effort to make the
techniques of Studio Pedagogy more
effective and much more affordable5. Studio instruction was
originally developed for 1st and 2nd
year science and math courses6 and then progressed to the core
ECE courses. It was found to be
a very good way to deliver engineering education and attracted a
steady stream of visitors all of
whom went away hoping they could implement something similar.
However, very few were
successful because the costs were so high - about $10 k per
seat. An inexpensive studio for
teaching electronics was then developed using a small custom
circuit board to deliver the
functionality needed. With the help of industry and NSF funding
and the support of a growing
but small number of true believers, the RED2 board became
generally available in 20087. It had
all the necessary functionality and the robust design to survive
regular usage by undergrads. The
cost of each was about the same as a textbook or about $150.
The ‘Lab-in-a-box’ initiative at Virginia Tech started in 2003
and represents a parallel path to
design hands-on activities for circuits courses8. Students were
required to purchase the portable
electronics used in the sophomore and junior-level circuits
laboratory courses to instill a sense of
ownership of the technology. Initially, the oscilloscope
functions were derived from a sound
card9. The frequency range (roughly 50-5000 Hz) and maximum
voltage (1 V) were limited by
Page 23.576.3
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the specifications of the sound card. It was replaced by the
Velleman PCSGU 250, a two
channel oscilloscope with an arbitrary function generator to
eliminate the continual issues with
incompatible sound cards as a result of Windows operating system
upgrades. This drove the cost
under $200.
In parallel with these ground-breaking educational platforms,
there have been a number of
commercial products aimed at the same market. They face three
challenging requirements: low
cost, software that runs on any PC and bandwidth in the 10 MHz
range with 12-bit resolution to
cover the typical analog functions. Products from Pico and
National Instruments partially met
the specifications. The decisive change came with a new
generation of analog-to-digital
converters. They have now been embedded into the Analog
Discovery product that forms the
basis of this paper. For the first time, we have a commercially
available personal lab tool that is
adequate in terms of resolution and bandwidth for most analog
and circuit teaching scenarios in
electronics at less than the cost of a textbook.
Strategy for Analog Discovery applications in teaching
The exploratory work described in the previous section
demonstrated that a personal lab
instrument could functionally replace the traditional fixed lab
workstation and also establish
entirely new modes of educational delivery10. Systematic
evaluation of the impact on learning
and the learner indicated that there were many opportunities to
extend the student experience in
design/synthesis, experimental homework and curiosity-driven
learning11. The availability of the
new Analog Discovery hardware is timely because it opens up
opportunities for the whole
academic community to build on the exploratory work described
above.
Over the last 20 years, all Engineering programs have steadily
strengthened their project and
capstone courses to develop team-working and cross-disciplinary
problem solving skills. The
outcomes can be seen in many ASEE presentations and in the
emphasis placed on these
outcomes in the ABET accreditation process. Within the context
of continuous improvement,
the emphasis now shifts to the foundational experimental skills
to define, design and execute
practical work to a professional level. The availability of new
tools coupled to a student-centric
approach with demonstrated advantages in learning outcomes11
offers an opportunity for new
teaching applications across the whole curriculum.
The strategy was to establish a loosely-coordinated evaluation
in several different programs and
then report the findings through a paper to ASEE. The prototype
Analog Discovery instrument
was made available to the four academic groups in early 2012.
The following sections show
how the evaluation was done in each of the four universities.
The extended specifications for the
instrument are given in the Appendix12. Software is provided
with the instrument and students
can also buy a very comprehensive components kit with tutorials
for its use.
Page 23.576.4
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Analog Discovery applications at
Experienced engineers often recall their early years of
tinkering with electronics and how excited
they were to explore the electronic circuit world. Hands
way to motivate early program engineering students to study core
subject
This analytical foundation is essential
circuit design engineers. With tinkering and observation comes
design instinct and applied
knowledge that’s hard to get any other wa
into the curriculum (with other college initiatives) retention
of first year electrical engineering
students between 2001 and 2010 has risen from below 70% to over
83%.
Now with the introduction of a cost effective,
changing our thinking on how to effectively deliver engineering
lab content and expand the
domain for student participation in the hands
module along with a lap top computer and associated instrument
interface software constitute a
full blown test and measurement laboratory or from a student
perspective a “back
Here is an example of the versatility and performance capability
of th
applied to typical university lab exercises.
Second year students in electrical engineering explore the
terminal characteristics of
semiconductor devices. Instead of using a $50,000 semiconductor
parameter analyzer where
student access is limited, we use the $99 Analog Discovery
module
student. The module is configured as synchronous repetitive
step
and the two channel oscilloscope is placed in X
Having differential inputs for the oscilloscope channels makes
X
foolproof. The classic NMOSFET output characteristics (ID vs
VDS) with VGS stepped in 0.5
V increments are shown in Figure
VSB stepped in -1 V increments are shown in Figure
Analog Discovery applications at Rochester Institute of
Technology
engineers often recall their early years of tinkering with
electronics and how excited
they were to explore the electronic circuit world. Hands-on
experience remains the single best
way to motivate early program engineering students to study core
subjects in math and science.
essential for those who wish to become practicing, creative,
analog
With tinkering and observation comes design instinct and
applied
knowledge that’s hard to get any other way. In the ten years
since introducing “tinkering labs”
into the curriculum (with other college initiatives) retention
of first year electrical engineering
students between 2001 and 2010 has risen from below 70% to over
83%.
a cost effective, portable instrument cluster, we are
dramatically
changing our thinking on how to effectively deliver engineering
lab content and expand the
domain for student participation in the hands-on learning
process. The Analog Discover
with a lap top computer and associated instrument interface
software constitute a
measurement laboratory or from a student perspective a “back
example of the versatility and performance capability of this
small lab module when
university lab exercises.
Second year students in electrical engineering explore the
terminal characteristics of
nstead of using a $50,000 semiconductor parameter analyzer
where
s is limited, we use the $99 Analog Discovery module that is
owned by each
student. The module is configured as synchronous repetitive
step-and-sweep signal generators
and the two channel oscilloscope is placed in X-Y mode to
display current versus voltage
Having differential inputs for the oscilloscope channels makes
X-Y displays simple and
The classic NMOSFET output characteristics (ID vs VDS) with VGS
stepped in 0.5
V increments are shown in Figure 1. The NMOSFET transfer
characteristics (ID vs VGS) with
1 V increments are shown in Figure 2.
engineers often recall their early years of tinkering with
electronics and how excited
on experience remains the single best
s in math and science.
for those who wish to become practicing, creative, analog
With tinkering and observation comes design instinct and
applied
y. In the ten years since introducing “tinkering labs”
into the curriculum (with other college initiatives) retention
of first year electrical engineering
we are dramatically
changing our thinking on how to effectively deliver engineering
lab content and expand the
Analog Discovery
with a lap top computer and associated instrument interface
software constitute a
measurement laboratory or from a student perspective a
“back-pack lab”.
all lab module when
Second year students in electrical engineering explore the
terminal characteristics of
nstead of using a $50,000 semiconductor parameter analyzer
where
owned by each
sweep signal generators
Y mode to display current versus voltage.
Y displays simple and
The classic NMOSFET output characteristics (ID vs VDS) with VGS
stepped in 0.5
. The NMOSFET transfer characteristics (ID vs VGS) with
Page 23.576.5
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Once the Analog Discovery module settings are adjusted for a
specific device test, the module
configuration can be stored for future use. By changing the
appropriate signal generator
polarities these setups can be easily adapted for complementary
PMOSFETs, bipolar junction
transistors or other semiconductor devices.
Recently, we have begun using the Analog Discovery module and
parts kit to offer an online
electrical engineering course with laboratory content. Each
laboratory exercise has been tailored
for the students to conduct lab work in their own workspace. As
of this date, the course has
completed eight weeks of work and the portable test lab and lab
exercises have proven to be as
effective as university-based laboratory work.
Discovery applications at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
The strategy that now governs the Analog Discovery applications
started when Mobile Studio
was first used in the same ECE course in which Studio Pedagogy
was introduced – Electric
Circuits. This 2nd year course is the first serious introduction
to analog circuits in the Electrical
Engineering and Computer and Systems Engineering curricula. The
original implementation of
Mobile Studio addressed only the existing studio activities but
without requiring the expensive
classroom used previously. This made possible larger enrollments
because any room in which
the students had access to power for their laptops became a
studio classroom. All of the
characteristics of Studio pedagogy were incorporated. Topic
introduction with a short lecture,
demo or hands-on activity was followed by paper and pencil
calculations, simulation and/or
experiments with breaks for discussions and additional lectures
as needed. Lectures could be
any length from a few minutes to over an hour, with most around
20 minutes. Figure 3 shows the
experimental setup using the RED board to characterize the
motion of a cantilever beam.
Figure 3 Application to cantilever beam oscillation.
Page 23.576.6
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Note the decaying sinusoid on the laptop screen and the small
toolbox which holds everything
needed to do the measurement, except for the beam.
With the introduction of the more capable and reliable RED2
board, Mobile Studio pedagogy
expanded to other four and two year institutions in the US and
abroad and to additional courses.
In addition to making possible the use of hands-on activities at
universities with very limited
operating budgets, such as those found in Sub-Saharan Africa,
the most exciting changes were to
the pedagogical model itself. These were based on the key
difference between mobile learning
platforms like Mobile Studio and the Analog Discovery – that
they can be used by students
anywhere and anytime. Thus, students were given hardware
homework because they carried
their lab in their backpacks. They worked through the assigned
tasks and then demonstrated
their results when they were next in class. Flipped classrooms
were also implemented, most
notably in Electronic Instrumentation, where students can watch
video lectures and try ideas out
experimentally as they are learning the course material. There
are many, many more ideas to be
explored that are now possible with this new approach to
instruction.
Discovery applications at Virginia Tech
The Analog Discovery instrument has been used in two lab courses
where students perform
circuit analysis either by hand or using MATLAB and simulations
using Cadence OrCAD
PSpice. It dramatically expands the capability to the point
where the maximum frequency of
operation is now limited by the parasitic capacitance of the
breadboards used for circuit
construction. Operational parameters are measured and compared
with the analysis and
simulation predictions. Unlike a typical lab course, the
students do not go to a laboratory
classroom to do the assignment but have to do the work on their
own schedule during the week
in whatever location they chose. To promote student independence
and self-learning, a library of
online materials has been developed and is provided to the
students through hotlinks embedded
in the report templates that are posted on Scholar, the local
course management program. These
are brief lectures that highlight the theories that form the
foundation of the experiments and
discuss deviations from the ideal, flash and video tutorials on
simulation and measurement
techniques and links to component datasheets. Hands-on
activities using the electronic platform
have also been incorporated into courses on electromagnetic
fields, signals and systems and fiber
optics.
Three major initiatives have supported the lab activities:
� the refinement of an automated lab report grading program
� the development of an online laboratory course
� the integration of MATLAB more completely in our
experiments.
The last effort was motivated by a need to provide additional
activities that strengthen the
programming skills of undergraduate students and, more
importantly, to provide guidance to
Page 23.576.7
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students as they learn how certain factors contributed to the
deviations from the ideal
performance of real circuits.
A MATLAB Data Acquisition Toolbox Support Package has been
developed for Analog
Discovery Hardware13. Using this package, students are able to
generate vectors in MATLAB
that can be easily exported to the Analog Discovery as the
source code for the arbitrary function
generator. Furthermore, data from the Analog Discovery
oscilloscope can be read directly into
MATLAB. Students can then overlay the plots of the expected
output signals, calculated using
nominal value components with ideal characteristics, with the
measured outputs from the actual
circuits that they have constructed. With minimal effort, the
students can tailor their original
calculations, such as change component values from the nominal
to the measured values, to
determine the contribution of component tolerance on the circuit
performance. When prompted
to perform a more in-depth evaluation of their design, students
consider the effect of parasitics,
such as resistance and capacitance in an inductor and other
non-ideal models for the components
used in the circuit. Once students have gained an appreciation
of these effects, they can
understand how to read a datasheet for example to select an
appropriate operational amplifier
based upon the input and output resistances and other device
parameters rather than selecting the
first one that they see in their parts kit. It is this merger of
theory and practice that stimulates
students to develop a deeper understanding of circuit design and
enables them to create more
innovative and robust designs.
The students design two bandpass filters – one designed to have
a center frequency at the
fundamental frequency of the square wave and a bandwidth of 175
Hz and the second bandpass
filter with a center frequency at the third harmonic and a
bandwidth of 825 Hz. Both filters are
first order active filters with a gain of -1. The students are
not asked to predict the shape of the
output signal from either of the filters in the required prelab
analysis, though they are required to
simulate the frequency response of each filter in PSpice to
demonstrate that the correctness of
their designs. Once the students have verified their filter
designs, they then construct the filters.
With the fast Fourier transform option in the Waveforms software
program, students measure the
amplitudes of each frequency component in the signal that they
have generated using MATLAB
and compare the results with the amplitudes and frequencies of
the components that are
measured from the ideal square wave, which is one of the
standard functions available in the
library of signals on the Analog Discovery. Then, the students
measure the output of the first
bandpass filter using the signal that they created in MATLAB.
The signal in the time domain,
shown in the upper plot in figure 4, looks as one might expect –
a reasonably good sine wave
with a frequency equal to the fundamental frequency. In the
frequency domain, there are still
peaks associated with the higher order harmonics, but the
amplitudes of these components are
quite small and cannot be observed in the lower plot in figure
4.
Page 23.576.8
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Figure. 4 Arbitrary function generator (blue) and bandpass
filter output with a fo = 1 kHz and
BW = 175 Hz in the time domain (upper plot) and frequency domain
(lower plot).
Analog Discovery applications at Arizona State University
A prototype of the Analog Discovery and its larger Explorer
sibling had been used in several
student projects so there was benchmark data for applications,
acceptance and performance
relative to other lab instruments. The course selected for the
first full-class application of the
Analog Discovery in Fall 2012 concerned the engineering
processes involved in the introduction
of new electronic products. The availability of the new
instrument provided a timely opportunity
to use it as the featured product. Forty students were enrolled
in this junior-level class.
Only about a third of the class was following a traditional
track with a full time program directly
after high school. Many of the remainder had a ‘fractured
educational background’ in that their
academic career to this point had been spread over many years in
several institutions and
programs. The practical work consisted of six extended
experiments with two or three weeks
allocated for each and no scheduled lab location or time.
Students were recommended to buy their own Analog Discovery in
place of a textbook and do
the experimental work on their own and off-campus. However,
there were no restrictions on
collaboration and two workstations were available for open
access in a lab for anyone who did
not have their personal instrument. At the 21-day point, 27% of
the class did not own the
instrument but within another month, the flexibility and
outcomes being demonstrated by their
peers led them all to buy. By the end, only 8 % said they would
consider selling it.
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One of the first issues to emerge was that almost no-one in the
class used any standardized
process to plan, set up, execute and report experiments. Their
previous experiences in traditional
lab classes had provided this process but it had not been
emphasized to the point where it was a
routine sequence of actions. When students work on their own, a
more systematic approach is
needed so they were given a sequence adapted from experimental
design within capstone
projects. It has seven stages: purpose, scope, design,
approvals, execution, analysis and report
so students became accountable for every facet of each
experiment. Problems encountered in
the course of experiments were reviewed in weekly class tutorial
sessions.
All the lab work was concerned with behavior of common
components and analog signal
processing. In the first three experiments, the scope and
purpose were pre-defined. They
included: response of RC circuits to sine and square wave
inputs, basic op amp gain blocks,
passive and simple active filters. They demonstrated data
acquisition and analysis using the
built-in Bode and Fourier-transform capabilities. The second
group of three experiments was
determined by each student to suit their own perceived interests
or learning needs. Inevitably,
the range of experiments chosen was large; from a repeat of one
of the first three to convertors,
multiplexing or device characterization.
The main outcome was that they overwhelmingly appreciated the
new experience. The
responses (based on 40 responses to yes/no questions) can be
summarized as:
% Yes
Is the Discovery more effective than a conventional lab 81
Is the Discovery good value relative to buying a class textbook
76
Do you now consider yourself a reasonably proficient user
100
Was the documentation supplied via Blackboard adequate 88
Have you used information from the Digilent web site 81
Would a You-tube video and FAQ help 96
Do you need more 1:1 personal instruction 42
Did you collaborate with others on any of the labs 85
Did you learn more when you collaborated 92
Did this lab work take more time than labs for other courses
92
Was it a more effective use of your time for learning 81
Should other students in the program buy the instrument 96
These responses certainly provide a positive class comment on
the success of the Analog
Discovery as a home-lab enabler. Some feedback also demonstrated
other outcomes. The first
was that even the simple introductory experiments that should
have been fully understood by
everyone relied on foundational understanding that was far from
secure. The students were the
first to admit this and over half chose to do second-phase
experiments that let them to further
explore and reinforce the basics rather than try new circuit
functions. More than half also said
Page 23.576.10
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they had used the Analog Discovery to help their understanding
of concepts in other classes.
The average time spent on lab work was 5 – 6 hours per week.
This figure was requested on
three different occasions during the semester with the same
average time for each poll.
Conclusions from initial Analog Discovery applications
It is rare to experience an abrupt change in the way courses can
be organized and delivered. In
this case, however, the Analog Discovery provided such an event
in the collaborating
institutions. It has the cost advantages of a consumer product;
it is an instant substitute for the
majority of instruments currently used in electronics teaching
labs; students can be using it
effectively within a few hours of receipt and there are no
procurement constraints.
The collaborative activities reported in the four cases above
have demonstrated a number of
important features:
� The teaching initiatives pioneered through Mobile Studio and
Lab-in-a-box can be
substantially extended.
� Both students and instructors previously unacquainted with the
technology or pedagogy
have been consistently successful in taking or offering courses
previously organized
around traditional lab facilities.
� The instrument can be applied to about 80 % of the teaching
lab work in a typical
electronics undergraduate program. The only applications for
which it is unsuited are
those requiring high precision or high frequencies (above 10
MHz).
� Students spent more time on their lab work and claim they
acquired more practical
competency than they did in conventional scheduled lab sessions
with fixed workstations.
� The development of these personal experimental skills is
essential for their
complementary work in team-based projects.
The outcomes reported in this paper are mostly qualitative. That
is to be expected from the
initial experiences with a new product. However, we are clearly
at the start of a large-scale
educational experiment and longer-term quantitative evaluations
are being set up to determine:
� The depth of understanding behind the increased applications
fluency.
� The level of student accountability in terms of deliverables
and data ethics that goes with
ownership of a personal lab.
� Templates for a more rigorous process for student-driven
experimental planning and
results analysis.
� How much student-student cooperation is established given that
it is an additional burden
that they must organize since there are no longer scheduled lab
classes where cooperation
is imposed through shared use of lab equipment.
� Whether the benefits accrue equally to students who have
followed a full-time academic
program and those whose educational progress has been
interrupted by jobs, family or
transfers.
Page 23.576.11
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� The efficiency with which experimental competency can be
applied later in unscripted
applications such as capstone projects.
� The extent to which faculty and student-generated experiments
can be openly distributed
to act as a platform on which to build a customized practical
learning experience.
� Can the appeal of Mobile Studio and Lab-in-a-box to students
underrepresented in STEM
education be scaled up?
� Does it increase the level of technical curiosity?
Wider implications
The utility for individual students is clear but the greater
question is whether the impact on
higher education programs will be incremental or disruptive. On
its own, the Analog Discovery
instrument certainly provides an incremental change and its
performance/cost value make it a
welcome addition to the teaching inventory. However, it can also
be a key component in a trend
that could become disruptive for the same reasons that
electronics has been disruptive in every
other business sector. It is a more powerful product that is
easier to use and with a substantially
lower cost than the previous generation.
In this case, consider the impact on the major stakeholders:
� Students see the most direct impact in that they become more
accountable for their lab
work. This attitude promotes engaged learning and a professional
view of how
experimental work has to be planned, executed and reported.
� These are central concepts in many of the ABET outcomes. New
opportunities for
continuous improvement are welcomed by the accreditation
bodies.
� Almost every student engaged in a practical project will make
use of electronic
instrumentation. The most likely area of trouble concerns analog
signal processing
between sensors and computers and this is a path to ‘just
enough’ electronics training for
non-specialists.
� Faculty who seek to integrate concepts with practical
applications now have many more
options both in scope and delivery mode.
� Institutions have an immediate advantage in not having to
support and schedule
electronics labs.
� Wide-scale collaboration through massive open on-line courses
(MOOCs) can now be
extended to include experimental work14.
� The cost barriers to entry have been reduced for high schools
and hobbyists. Awareness
in these domains is a powerful factor in attracting more
students to university programs.
� Industry commitment is shown through direct product
development by Analog Devices,
Digilent (now part of National Instruments) and MathWorks. Page
23.576.12
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� Application demonstrations have been featured in many industry
short courses. They
have not been reported here but the universal comment has been,
“Where was that when I
was a student?”
In conclusion, the availability of inexpensive USB-powered
electronic instrumentation offers a
path to dramatically transform engineering education. Students
are engaged earlier and more
often with hands-on learning tools creating a more interesting,
practical course of study
beginning in the freshman year. This increased emphasis on
hands-on learning, discovery and
problem-solving skills seamlessly translates into the basic
requirements industry requires in
engineers. The availability of electronic instrumentation that
is cheaper than a textbook
promotes inquiry-based learning, on-line education and
development of world-wide user
communities in academia and industry and of high-tech hobbyists.
In one stroke, the availability
of USB-powered electronics has redefined the concept of
student-centric hands-on learning.
Students can now own their personal laboratory stations; they
are no longer bound by the
constraints of fixed space, equipment, and schedules in their
institution to conduct experiments.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the long-term support and
encouragement received from
their departments and colleagues. Industry support was received
from Analog Devices, Digilent,
MathWorks and Hewlett-Packard. NSF funding under DUE-0717832,
1226114, 1226087,
1226065 and 1226011, EEC-0812056 and undergraduate education
awards 0343160, 0817102
and 1226011 also enabled the work described in this paper.
Bibliography:
1. C M Christensen, “The innovator's solution: creating and
sustaining successful growth”. Harvard Business Press, 2003. ISBN
978-1-57851-852-4.
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National Academies Press, 2010.
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http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype-cycle.jsp
4. Azad, A., Auer, A., Harward, J. (eds).”Internet Accessible
Remote Laboratories: Scalable ELearning Tools for Engineering and
Science Disciplines”. IGI Global Publisher, USA. November 2011.
ISBN13: 9781613501863
5. E.W. Maby, A.B. Carlson, K.A. Connor, W. C. Jennings, P.M.
Schoch, “A Studio Format for Innovative
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7. D Millard, M Chouikha & F Berry, “Improving student
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9. Details are at: www.zeitnitz.de/Christian/scope_en
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10. K A Connor et al. “Mobile Studio pedagogy, parts 1 and 2”,
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material are at:
http://digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,842,1018&Prod=ANALOG-DISCOVERY
13. Details of the MathWorks on the Discovery platform can be
found at:
http://www.mathworks.com/academia/digilent-analog-discovery/
14. Harden N, “The end of the university as we know it”, The
American Interest, Jan/Feb 2013.
Appendix . Analog Discovery specifications.
The Digilent Analog Discovery™ design kit, developed in
conjunction with Analog Devices
Inc., is the first in a new line of all-in-one analog design
kits that will enable engineering
students to quickly and easily experiment with advanced
technologies and build and test real-
world, functional analog design circuits anytime, anywhere -
right on their PCs. For the price of
a textbook, students can purchase a low-cost analog hardware
development platform and
components, with access to downloadable teaching materials,
reference designs and lab projects
to design and implement analog circuits as a supplement to their
core engineering curriculum.
The overall package dimensions are 83 x 65 x 18 mm. Images of
the top and bottom of the
internal board are shown in figure 5.
Page 23.576.14
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Figure 5. Component layout on Discovery board
The unit is driven entirely through the USB link so power is
limited and has to be distributed
between the instrument operating needs, load on the signal lines
and the fixed ± 5 V dc output
power supply. The I/O connector is notched to avoid the risk of
an inverted coupling. The mass
of unscreened I/O wires can be awkward to handle but they are a
working compromise between
simplicity, frequency range, noise limits and cost. However,
other connectors common in
laboratory settings such as BNC coax and scope probes can be
easily added.
It uses the well-established Digilent Waveforms software to
display power supply, analog and
digital signal sources as well as a two-channel fully
differential oscilloscope. The maximum
sampling rate is 100 M sample/s but oversampling is always
assured with 16 k samples in a
channel record. This illustrates an interesting design
compromise for the educational market. It
means a lower nominal bandwidth but since the full frame of the
oscilloscope image has 16 k
data points, there is no risk of undersampling. For students who
may be seeing time-frequency
transpositions or Bode plots for the first time, this large
sample size is a good precaution. It also
provides a rapid introduction to the world of ‘big data’ when
students save the data file and find
they have to manage 16,000 rows in the Excel spreadsheet.
Analog Inputs
• AD9648 dual, 14-bit, 105 MSPS, 1.8 V dual analog-to-digital
converter • 2-channel differential (1 MΩ, 24 pF), ±20 V max • 250
µV to 5 V/division with variable gain settings • 100 MSPS, 5 MHz
bandwidth, up to 16k points/channel record length
Analog Outputs
• AD9717 dual, 14-bit, 125 MSPS, low power digital-to-analog
converter • 2-channel, single-ended, arbitrary waves up to ±4 V •
100 MSPS, 5 MHz bandwidth, up to 16k samples/channel • Standard and
user-defined waveforms • Sweeps, envelopes, AM and FM
modulation
Page 23.576.15
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Power Supplies • 2 fixed +5 V (+50 mA) and –5 V (+50 mA)
Digital I/O
• 16 signals shared between logic analyzer, pattern generator
and I/O devices • 100 MSPS, buffer size is 4k transitions per pin •
Cross-triggering with scope channels
Software
• Waveforms™ software: full-featured GUI for all instruments •
TINA circuit simulation software • Windows® XP® or newer
Analog parts kit
• 16 ICs • 12 sensors • 105 resistors and potentiometers • 27
capacitors and inductors • 28 transistors and diodes • 70 jumper
wires and solderless board
Page 23.576.16