Some years ago the Electrical Engineering department was visited by delegations from both the Chemical and Mechanical engineering departments.  In both cases they were dissatisfied with the course we were offering to them.  Their basic argument was that the material in the traditional course was not usable for their students, and in both cases they requested a course with more of a focus on instrumentation and measurement.  And, as a result of that request the deparment allowed me to attempt a design of a course that would be more in the direction they wanted.

        The resultant course is the course that has been offered a number of times. Here is a link to the schedule for the most recent offering of that course.  And, here is a quick overview of the contents of the course, week-by-week.

• Week 1:  Basic concepts - voltage, current, resistance, voltage dividers
• Week 2:  Sensors 1 - Temperature sensors, Time Constants
• Week 3:  Signals and Time Constants
• Week 4:  Sensors 2 - AC tachometers, Sinusoidal Signals (Amplitude, Frequency), Sampling
• Week 5:  Filters - Filtering noise from signals, AC sinusoidal behavior of filters.
• Week 6:  Fourier 1 - Fourier Series representations of periodic signals.
• Week 7:  Fourier 2 - FFT
• Week 8:  LabVIEW - Introduction
• Week 9:  IEEE-488 Systems - GPIB instruments and LabVIEW
• Week 10:  Data - Data representations (integer, floating point, character string), File operations, Data storage
• Week 11:  Data Converstion - Converting data in LabVIEW, Data presentation
• Week 12:  Control 1 - ON-OFF Control
• Week 13:  Control 2 - Proportional Control & Implementation, Error analysis, Intro to Response
• Week 14:  Networks - Control across the network using LabVIEW

        There are several aspects of the course that should be noted.

• There is no textbook that gives the material covered in this course.
• I have a website for the course, and here is a link to the course web-site.  This web-site has links to material in a "book-like" web site that has been used for several courses and which is used by numerous teachers on the web from numerous places around the world.
• The "book-like" web site has material on all of the topics in the course.  Here is a link to that web-site. The material on that web-site prints out to over 1000 pages and there is a lot of interactive material including simulations, self-grading questions, etc.  Check out the index (top button on the left) for a "book-like" index of links to material within the site.
• The course is as active as possible.
• There is a lab for every topic.  As much as possible, we do not give "by-the-numbers" instruction for the lab work even though the primary audience is Civil, Mechanical and Chemical engineering students - with a few Chemistry majors tossed in at times.
• Class time is active - i.e. various kinds of active learning techniques are used.  There are numerous in-class problems and questions that are used throughout the semester.
• Course outcomes:
• Are available from the start of the course.  They are written to specific levels in Bloom's taxonomy and I aim for a format where I tell them what is given, and given that, what they should be able to do.  As much as possible I used McBeath action verbs to describe what they should be able to do.  Here is a link to the course outcomes.

        The version in Spring 2008 changed somewhat from prior offerings.  Here are the details of the changes.

• Elimination of Diode and Op-Amp material.
• In previous offerings I had students rectify and filter the output of the AC tachometer.  That necessitated discussing diodes and operational amplifiers.  That was done too hastily and ultimately seemed to me to be something that took us away from the main flow of ideas in the course.  There was only the one sensor - the AC tach - that required those topics, and even though they are usually included in courses for Chemical, Mechanical and Civil engineers, they seemed off the track.
• Addition of material on effects of sampling on measurements.
• Sampling effects (aliasing) can cause loss of information, and can be misleading.  Using the oscilloscope to measure an AC tach output as a motor came up to speed or as it slowed to rest produces signals that have to be under-sampled if the complete transient is going to be captured on an oscilloscope display.  That's one place that almost necessitated some discussion of sampling.
• Adding material on sampling gave me an opportunity to discuss sampling in sound systems (CDs, iPods, etc.) and make those kinds of connections - connections that are valuable in understanding that material.
• In turn, all of this required that I develop web-based material on sampling effects.  The material developed is good, but I know that I will have to add to it next year.
• Change in quiz policy
• In previous offerings I gave a quiz every Wednesday through the semester (13 quizzes) and the quiz started after a half-hour into the class period.  In the half hour before the quiz I allowed students to ask questions about the quiz material.  After reading the paper at this link (and other papers on that same topic.  See Jeff Karpicke's page.),  I thought it better to have a quiz situation where there were no cues about the quiz material, i.e. to work toward unaided recall or complete retrieval.  By allowing questions, I permitted students to put material into their short-term memories and that material was available during the quiz.
• This past semester I still gave the quiz at the end of the half hour, but did not permit questions prior to the quiz.  The research evidence would suggest that this was a better student learning experience since it should have been closer to a complete retrieval event for the students.

        This notebook has material for this course, including:

• My thoughts on the course - why it is the way it is, what I am trying to do, etc.
• Links to thoughts on each week's material
• Week 1 - Basic Concepts & Intro to Sensors
• Week 2 - Sensors & Time Constants
• Week 3 - Signals
• Week 4 - Sensors - 2 & Sampling
• Week 5 - Signals
• Week 6 - Fourier 1 (Fourier Series)
• Week 7 - Fourier 2 (FFT)
• Week 8 - LabVIEW Introduction
• Week 9 - IEEE-488 (GPIB) Measurements in LabVIEW
• Week 10 - Data Representations
• Week 11 - Data Conversion
• Week 12 - Intro to Control - ON-OFF Control
• Week 13 - Proportional Control Steady State
• Week 14 - Measurement and/or Control across the Network