I have struggled with the whole issue of updating EET curriculum. On one hand being from industry I clearly see how skewed the curriculum is from what is needed. It appalls me if you really want to know. And while I know what should be done, I know it is not easy. Because this semester I tried to implement what I think is a better replacement for the old approach.
This fall semester I taught the Solid State course at my college. It is like others of different names in other colleges. The traditional course covered semiconductor basics, diodes, bipolar transistors (BJTs), FETs, and basic power supply and amplifier circuits. I used the PH Paynter book but you may have used Floyd or Malvino. Whatever. They are all the same anyway and competent but very dated. What I tried to do is to tone down the nitty gritty circuit analysis approach and introduce a more systems approach that industry seems to endorse. And it is more of what a graduate needs today. It was hard to do.
In discussing this with colleagues, all I got was "you are dumbing down the course" by doing that. How could I not teach detailed BJT biasing? Just try to tell an entrenched EET instructor that you don't need load lines and BJT biasing details and see what happens. Yet in real life, a tech never does this. Even engineers rarely do it and those engineers are IC designers. With most transistors inside ICs, who cares how they are biased? It is insanity to spend so much time in a limited semester period pounding such trivia into students heads. In fact doing so will only make them disappointed later when they find out they never do this. In fact they quickly discover that most transistors today are MOSFETs not BJTs. What a let down.
Anyway, I did indeed teach BJT basics and a little of biasing but went on to put more emphasis on MOSFETs. Then I went on to covering real amplifier ICs instead of discrete BJT amps. Op amps got lots of coverage but I also covered power amps, class D switching amps, video amps and all the more common stuff you see in equipment today. I also went heavy on switching power supplies since over 80% of all supplies are of this type, not the linear type covered in the book. Switching regulators, DC-DC converters, power management ICs and so on.
Instead of bias I focused on a higher level view. Mainly signal flow in ICs from one stage to the next. Impedance matching and circuit loading, more testing and troubleshooting. All that is a far better fit than what the books do. (I hope some authors are reading this.)
I must admit, I felt strange with this approach having taught it the old fashion way for so long. But I can no longer stand the guilt of teaching the history of electronics rather than the current truth. Yes, I felt odd, but good at the same time. The books did not help with little or no coverage of the ICs and other techniques that are so "today". I used internet gleaned supplements, the WRE online modules (http://www.work-readyelectronics.org/) and some material I created.
As for the lab, I add more ICs and troubleshooting. Less discretes. Lots of amplifier chips of different types, regulators both linear and switching, DC-DC converters, and some oscillators including PLLs. I only did one experiment on a basic common emitter amplifier. And some on switching circuits like power MOSFETs and the 555 timer.
The bottom line is that the students got the fundamentals but with the flavor of the real world not some phoney story about all that biasing, analysis and design. Wake up guys. If you want to teach that stuff go to an engineering school and then don't be too disappointed if they don't teach as much of it as they used to.
Be brave. Update your courses yourself with this method yourself. It is far less boring than teaching the same old tired stuff year after year and you just may like it as well as more properly prepare the student for what he will actually see in the outside job.
Hope you all have a great Xmas.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Monday, July 9, 2007
Technology: The Twilight Zone
In speaking with a colleague on the west coast recently, he referred to the education and jobs for bachelor of technology graduates as the "twilight zone". I know what he means. Since he and many others in technology or engineering education have BSEE credentials, he cannot really know what it is like. The BSET degree seems to be a very misunderstood segment of engineering/technology education in industry and academia. Because I am a product of the system that produced bachelor of technology degrees as well as being on the hiring side in industry and academia, I can probably speak with some perspective on this subject. Here is my view.
Engineering Lite
Most of those with BSEE degrees think of BSET graduates as engineering lite. That is if they know anything at all about BSET degree programs at all which in my experience they do not. In fact they do not seem to recognize BSET grads at all and this is reflected in industry hiring. Are BSET grads capable of doing engineering? You bet. In fact, most BSET grads are actually employed as engineers. What else would they be employed as? Not techs as engineering tech positions dried up years ago. Originally the thought or goal was to have the BSET grad be a "super tech" that supported engineering but alternatively worked in manufacturing and other non-design jobs. These jobs were called technologists.
The term technologist is strictly a term dreamed up by the academicians that invented the BSET degree in the first place. In reality there never has been a real job in industry with that title. At least over the past 40 years, I have not seen it. If a BSET grad was hired it was as some super tech kind of job or as an engineer. Maybe it was as a field engineer or project engineer, but the job was officially engineering. I know the BSEE degree people really hate to hear that but it is true. I just wish that the administrators running BSET university programs would give up on the technologist term. Let it go. It is a myth....a mirage. It does not exist. Deal with it. But I guess it is the crutch that they use to distinguish themselves from the engineering departments who educate "real" engineers. An academic necessity as opposed to anything in the real world.
I initially went to school and got an AAS degree. That was in the hey day of engineering techs that did assist engineers in all manner of ways. I worked as an engineering tech for several years before realizing that I was stalled career-wise as I could rise no higher with my AAS degree. Lots of AAS grads hit this wall and feel the need and desire to go back to school and get the bachelors degree. I certainly did. But after finding out that none of my AAS work counted toward a BSEE degree, I was pretty depressed. Then in the mid-1960's the University of Houston offered the first bachelors of technology degree. It was called the Bachelors in Applied Science (BAS). It accepted AAS degree grads and gave them two more years of courses. It added some science and a full dose of math through differential equations, Laplace, etc. plus some additional social studies and advanced electronics courses.
I was somewhat skeptical what kind of reaction employers would have to my BAS degree. Most, of course, never heard of it and had no clue what a BAS grad could do. I think that is still the case 40+ years later today. Employers mostly do not have a clue to what these folks can do. In any case, there was an acute engineering shortage at that time and because I did have a "technical" bachelors degree I was hired as an engineer. Could I do the work? Of course. In fact, it was easy to compete with the recent BSEE grads who had far less hands-on practical and lab work than a technology grad has. And that is true even today. I remember hiring a recent BSEE from a major university. His first assignment was to design an amplifier to retrofit in a piece of telemetry gear. He did know how to design the amplifier but he was confused about what transistor to use, how to lay out a PC board and how to test it. That kind of info comes only from experience or, in many cases, a technology degree program.
In another instance, I was hiring a professor for an AAS degree program of which I was department head. Most of the candidates had MSEEs and a few PhDs. But not one of them, and I am serious about this, could pass the simple lab test I gave. It was to breadboard a 555 timer astable from a schematic with the components given then measure the frequency of the output on an oscilloscope. These folks didn't know the resistor color code, or how to find pin 1 on the IC or really know that an electrolytic capacitor was polarized. Reading an oscilloscope was also a major failure. Amazing really. But any of these guys could actually use the software to design a chip or to do extensive math analysis on the circuit. In any case, I hired the only technology graduate who had a BSET from Devry. He immediately built the circuit and gave me the frequency. Easy as pie. Hiring engineers to teach techs may not be the best thing to do, but that is what we have. BSEEs try to teach AAS students how to be an engineer and how to design when in today's world, techs don't really do those things. No wonder AAS degree programs are screwed up.
Anyway, I went on to a long engineering career working with NASA contractors on aerospace stuff and in the geophysical fields. About the only place I felt weak was with the very deep math analysis of very complex circuits and systems. But I was a whiz with the practical engineering stuff, especially digital which did not require all that mesh and nodal analysis and other similar methods.
Today's BSET grads are what I would call practical engineers. And there is more practical engineering in industry (the engineering grunt work if you will) than the heavy analysis and research engineering that really does need to be done by an MSEE or PhD. I just wish that those in industry knew this. A few do after years of hiring BSET's from local universities. But most do not and therefore allocate the BSET to the twilight zone. If you are ignorant of something you tend to avoid it. Human nature. A tragedy really as companies would benefit and there would be no so called engineering shortage.
Yes, BSET grads are in the twilight zone. Most know it or figure it out pretty fast after they graduate. They go into sales or marketing jobs, manufacturing or other support roles requiring a heavy technical background. But they can do engineering. The courses they take in the BSET programs are separate from similar courses in BSEE programs but the content is virtually the same and as I have discovered, the BSET guys use the same texts as the BSEE guys. But, and here is the real difference, the BSET guys get far more lab and hands-on work. The BSEE guys spend most time in front of a PC doing IC design work. As they well should.
It is really amazing how BSET programs have co-existed with BSEE programs for years and even grown. There are jobs out there for these grads. They are competent, knowledgeable, and in reality make better practical engineers than BSEE grads. They are denied access to professional engineering licensing because they are not real engineers. I have heard that some states actually recognize BSET grads to take the EIT and PE exams. Good for them. Do you think a person would actually apply for the EIT or PE exam if they did not think they could pass? Duh...... In fact, from my own examination of the PE exam, most of it is stuff you could actually learn on your own. God forbid they would let a self taught person take the exam even if he or she was a true genius or expert.
Proposal
Here is my current thinking on BSET grads and degrees. And it is not just because "I are one."
First, AAS grads really do need a path for higher education. The BSET is it. And in the real world, it matters less what the bachelors degree is in that just the fact that you have one at all. After years in the industry, what degree you have becomes nearly irrelevant (except in academia where they are totally hung up on what degree and where it is from). Keep giving the AAS grad a place to go and grow.
BSET grads for the most part do engineering work. Whether most colleges will admit to it or not. It is true. It is time to stop trying to separate or distinguish what is or is not real engineering. To do this I would merge BSEE and BSET departments and create a curriculum that provides one degree, the BSEE, that has two separate paths. One leads to a practical or applied engineering degree and the other a more advanced design and analysis slant that leads to the MSEE and PhD. The math, science and basic courses are all the same. AAS grads coming in for the BSEE would have to catch up on the math and some more in-depth electronics courses, but they could get in line for the degree. In the senior year, the paths diverge and the courses taken will steer the future education path. All that would be pretty easy to do in my mind. But I doubt we will ever see that. I am sure the BSEE departments wouldn't want their curricula to be dumbed down. Can you just imagine MIT and Stanford taking AAS degree transfers? Not really but it could be done with the proper restructuring of the engineering curricula to better match what is actually going on out in the real world.
Wouldn't it be great to start from scratch and build an engineering/technology degree program that better fit the real world? It would eliminate much of the current structure but it would also make the curricula much more relevant to the work and the technology of the 21st century. But that will never happen. So we will continue to live with degree programs that were designed for an earlier generation. Inwardly focused colleges and universities don't really care all that much about the industry they serve or the students they train. Some do of course but most don't. So the twilight zone continues to exist.
In speaking with a colleague on the west coast recently, he referred to the education and jobs for bachelor of technology graduates as the "twilight zone". I know what he means. Since he and many others in technology or engineering education have BSEE credentials, he cannot really know what it is like. The BSET degree seems to be a very misunderstood segment of engineering/technology education in industry and academia. Because I am a product of the system that produced bachelor of technology degrees as well as being on the hiring side in industry and academia, I can probably speak with some perspective on this subject. Here is my view.
Engineering Lite
Most of those with BSEE degrees think of BSET graduates as engineering lite. That is if they know anything at all about BSET degree programs at all which in my experience they do not. In fact they do not seem to recognize BSET grads at all and this is reflected in industry hiring. Are BSET grads capable of doing engineering? You bet. In fact, most BSET grads are actually employed as engineers. What else would they be employed as? Not techs as engineering tech positions dried up years ago. Originally the thought or goal was to have the BSET grad be a "super tech" that supported engineering but alternatively worked in manufacturing and other non-design jobs. These jobs were called technologists.
The term technologist is strictly a term dreamed up by the academicians that invented the BSET degree in the first place. In reality there never has been a real job in industry with that title. At least over the past 40 years, I have not seen it. If a BSET grad was hired it was as some super tech kind of job or as an engineer. Maybe it was as a field engineer or project engineer, but the job was officially engineering. I know the BSEE degree people really hate to hear that but it is true. I just wish that the administrators running BSET university programs would give up on the technologist term. Let it go. It is a myth....a mirage. It does not exist. Deal with it. But I guess it is the crutch that they use to distinguish themselves from the engineering departments who educate "real" engineers. An academic necessity as opposed to anything in the real world.
I initially went to school and got an AAS degree. That was in the hey day of engineering techs that did assist engineers in all manner of ways. I worked as an engineering tech for several years before realizing that I was stalled career-wise as I could rise no higher with my AAS degree. Lots of AAS grads hit this wall and feel the need and desire to go back to school and get the bachelors degree. I certainly did. But after finding out that none of my AAS work counted toward a BSEE degree, I was pretty depressed. Then in the mid-1960's the University of Houston offered the first bachelors of technology degree. It was called the Bachelors in Applied Science (BAS). It accepted AAS degree grads and gave them two more years of courses. It added some science and a full dose of math through differential equations, Laplace, etc. plus some additional social studies and advanced electronics courses.
I was somewhat skeptical what kind of reaction employers would have to my BAS degree. Most, of course, never heard of it and had no clue what a BAS grad could do. I think that is still the case 40+ years later today. Employers mostly do not have a clue to what these folks can do. In any case, there was an acute engineering shortage at that time and because I did have a "technical" bachelors degree I was hired as an engineer. Could I do the work? Of course. In fact, it was easy to compete with the recent BSEE grads who had far less hands-on practical and lab work than a technology grad has. And that is true even today. I remember hiring a recent BSEE from a major university. His first assignment was to design an amplifier to retrofit in a piece of telemetry gear. He did know how to design the amplifier but he was confused about what transistor to use, how to lay out a PC board and how to test it. That kind of info comes only from experience or, in many cases, a technology degree program.
In another instance, I was hiring a professor for an AAS degree program of which I was department head. Most of the candidates had MSEEs and a few PhDs. But not one of them, and I am serious about this, could pass the simple lab test I gave. It was to breadboard a 555 timer astable from a schematic with the components given then measure the frequency of the output on an oscilloscope. These folks didn't know the resistor color code, or how to find pin 1 on the IC or really know that an electrolytic capacitor was polarized. Reading an oscilloscope was also a major failure. Amazing really. But any of these guys could actually use the software to design a chip or to do extensive math analysis on the circuit. In any case, I hired the only technology graduate who had a BSET from Devry. He immediately built the circuit and gave me the frequency. Easy as pie. Hiring engineers to teach techs may not be the best thing to do, but that is what we have. BSEEs try to teach AAS students how to be an engineer and how to design when in today's world, techs don't really do those things. No wonder AAS degree programs are screwed up.
Anyway, I went on to a long engineering career working with NASA contractors on aerospace stuff and in the geophysical fields. About the only place I felt weak was with the very deep math analysis of very complex circuits and systems. But I was a whiz with the practical engineering stuff, especially digital which did not require all that mesh and nodal analysis and other similar methods.
Today's BSET grads are what I would call practical engineers. And there is more practical engineering in industry (the engineering grunt work if you will) than the heavy analysis and research engineering that really does need to be done by an MSEE or PhD. I just wish that those in industry knew this. A few do after years of hiring BSET's from local universities. But most do not and therefore allocate the BSET to the twilight zone. If you are ignorant of something you tend to avoid it. Human nature. A tragedy really as companies would benefit and there would be no so called engineering shortage.
Yes, BSET grads are in the twilight zone. Most know it or figure it out pretty fast after they graduate. They go into sales or marketing jobs, manufacturing or other support roles requiring a heavy technical background. But they can do engineering. The courses they take in the BSET programs are separate from similar courses in BSEE programs but the content is virtually the same and as I have discovered, the BSET guys use the same texts as the BSEE guys. But, and here is the real difference, the BSET guys get far more lab and hands-on work. The BSEE guys spend most time in front of a PC doing IC design work. As they well should.
It is really amazing how BSET programs have co-existed with BSEE programs for years and even grown. There are jobs out there for these grads. They are competent, knowledgeable, and in reality make better practical engineers than BSEE grads. They are denied access to professional engineering licensing because they are not real engineers. I have heard that some states actually recognize BSET grads to take the EIT and PE exams. Good for them. Do you think a person would actually apply for the EIT or PE exam if they did not think they could pass? Duh...... In fact, from my own examination of the PE exam, most of it is stuff you could actually learn on your own. God forbid they would let a self taught person take the exam even if he or she was a true genius or expert.
Proposal
Here is my current thinking on BSET grads and degrees. And it is not just because "I are one."
First, AAS grads really do need a path for higher education. The BSET is it. And in the real world, it matters less what the bachelors degree is in that just the fact that you have one at all. After years in the industry, what degree you have becomes nearly irrelevant (except in academia where they are totally hung up on what degree and where it is from). Keep giving the AAS grad a place to go and grow.
BSET grads for the most part do engineering work. Whether most colleges will admit to it or not. It is true. It is time to stop trying to separate or distinguish what is or is not real engineering. To do this I would merge BSEE and BSET departments and create a curriculum that provides one degree, the BSEE, that has two separate paths. One leads to a practical or applied engineering degree and the other a more advanced design and analysis slant that leads to the MSEE and PhD. The math, science and basic courses are all the same. AAS grads coming in for the BSEE would have to catch up on the math and some more in-depth electronics courses, but they could get in line for the degree. In the senior year, the paths diverge and the courses taken will steer the future education path. All that would be pretty easy to do in my mind. But I doubt we will ever see that. I am sure the BSEE departments wouldn't want their curricula to be dumbed down. Can you just imagine MIT and Stanford taking AAS degree transfers? Not really but it could be done with the proper restructuring of the engineering curricula to better match what is actually going on out in the real world.
Wouldn't it be great to start from scratch and build an engineering/technology degree program that better fit the real world? It would eliminate much of the current structure but it would also make the curricula much more relevant to the work and the technology of the 21st century. But that will never happen. So we will continue to live with degree programs that were designed for an earlier generation. Inwardly focused colleges and universities don't really care all that much about the industry they serve or the students they train. Some do of course but most don't. So the twilight zone continues to exist.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
What This Blog Is All About
The other day someone asked me what this blog was all about. The description in the heading gives the general range of coverage, but for those of you who have been here before know my recurring themes. Here is just a quick summary for some of you who are new to this blog.
Low Enrollment Problem
This has been going on for years for multiple reasons that are too complex to summarize here. Dig through the blog for lots on info on this subject. But in general, enrollments in electronics technology in 2-year community colleges have been on the down swing for years. Many of you are still suffering with this problem and some of you actually had your departments closed, downsized or merged simply for lack of students. This problem continues although in some parts of the country there are signs of recovery. As I keep saying, this is more of a local problem than a national problem, but the trend is cerainly national in scope.
Despite the low enrollments, the jobs for technicians are still out there. In their annual report, the American Electronics Association (AeA) indicated plenty of tech jobs and many that go unfilled simply there are not enough engineers and technicians are being graduated. And these jobs pay significantly better than the average job today. We just can't seem to interest young people to learn electronics. No one seems to know why.
Anyway, I am happy to report that at the school where I teach as an adjunct, enrollments are up after four seriously distraous years of declines and cut backs. The department worked hard to revise and update the curriculum and add new majors such as biomed and electrical power. I see signs here and there that some programs are coming back as enrollments gradually turn around.
Just keep working to update courses and curricula to reflect the jobs available today and work with local industry. And do try to promote the programs by whatever means.
Textbooks
The main publishers McGraw Hill, Delmar and Prentice Hall produce very high quality texts but they are still dated. The NSF grant I helped win a few years back was awarded based on that fact. To help solve the problem, which the publishers seem unwilling to address, we developed 25 online tutorials on topics that are relevent today but that are not covered in textbooks or receive mininal or dated coverage. This program has been a huge success as it provides the latest material that instructors can use supplement the dated texts.
The problem actually lies less with the publishers and more with the authors and those who adopt a book. Instructors tend to lack current industry experience and up to date technical knowledge. Yet these are the people who write the books. No wonder the books are dated.
Unlike most authors, I work in industry and keep right on top on all the latest developments as well as what is current and relevant and what is not. I wish we could get more industry people to write the books but I don't see that happening.
What publishers could do is get industry input through a panel of experts or at least reviewers who can say what is hot and what is not.
Publishers are still reluctant to change too drastically as all the older instructors want to keep teaching the material they are familiar with but may not be relevant today. I have been told by my publisher that I could not take out the old and dated material simply because the reviewers say they want it. Boy, what a problem. And the publishers, wanting to sell their books, do what their customers say, keep the old and dated and leave out the new and relevant stuff. I only hope you instructors reading this will reconsider. You need the books to be as up to date as possible. Give in to change and constant new developments that are an inherent part of electronics.
Teach Techs to Be Techs
So many, if not most instructors have EE degrees. Few actually have Technology degrees which I have come to believe are far better suited to teaching in a technology program. EE degreed instructors tend to teach what they learned in college which is engineering. Engineers analyze and design. But Techs do not. Yet, that is the way most instructors want to teach the subject. Furthermore, most instructors have never even worked as a technician. How can they really know what it is like? And certainly how it has changed so drastically over the years.
The curriculum, books and courses need to be reoriented to teach techs and about the jobs they do today. Engineering tech jobs have all but gone away and it is rediculious to keep teaching subjects that were irrelevant even a few years ago. I urge you all to go out and find out what the tech jobs are today and figure out just what you need to teach. Some of what you teach now is still valid but so much of it is not. You need to teach more systems and less circuits level material. Less math analysis and design and more practical testing, measuring and troubleshooting. And that is not what most of you guys want to hear.
You can find out more detail on all of the topics I listed here by just browsing the proeious entries and the responses.
And please feel free to chime right in here if you agree or disagree.
Thanks for listening.
Low Enrollment Problem
This has been going on for years for multiple reasons that are too complex to summarize here. Dig through the blog for lots on info on this subject. But in general, enrollments in electronics technology in 2-year community colleges have been on the down swing for years. Many of you are still suffering with this problem and some of you actually had your departments closed, downsized or merged simply for lack of students. This problem continues although in some parts of the country there are signs of recovery. As I keep saying, this is more of a local problem than a national problem, but the trend is cerainly national in scope.
Despite the low enrollments, the jobs for technicians are still out there. In their annual report, the American Electronics Association (AeA) indicated plenty of tech jobs and many that go unfilled simply there are not enough engineers and technicians are being graduated. And these jobs pay significantly better than the average job today. We just can't seem to interest young people to learn electronics. No one seems to know why.
Anyway, I am happy to report that at the school where I teach as an adjunct, enrollments are up after four seriously distraous years of declines and cut backs. The department worked hard to revise and update the curriculum and add new majors such as biomed and electrical power. I see signs here and there that some programs are coming back as enrollments gradually turn around.
Just keep working to update courses and curricula to reflect the jobs available today and work with local industry. And do try to promote the programs by whatever means.
Textbooks
The main publishers McGraw Hill, Delmar and Prentice Hall produce very high quality texts but they are still dated. The NSF grant I helped win a few years back was awarded based on that fact. To help solve the problem, which the publishers seem unwilling to address, we developed 25 online tutorials on topics that are relevent today but that are not covered in textbooks or receive mininal or dated coverage. This program has been a huge success as it provides the latest material that instructors can use supplement the dated texts.
The problem actually lies less with the publishers and more with the authors and those who adopt a book. Instructors tend to lack current industry experience and up to date technical knowledge. Yet these are the people who write the books. No wonder the books are dated.
Unlike most authors, I work in industry and keep right on top on all the latest developments as well as what is current and relevant and what is not. I wish we could get more industry people to write the books but I don't see that happening.
What publishers could do is get industry input through a panel of experts or at least reviewers who can say what is hot and what is not.
Publishers are still reluctant to change too drastically as all the older instructors want to keep teaching the material they are familiar with but may not be relevant today. I have been told by my publisher that I could not take out the old and dated material simply because the reviewers say they want it. Boy, what a problem. And the publishers, wanting to sell their books, do what their customers say, keep the old and dated and leave out the new and relevant stuff. I only hope you instructors reading this will reconsider. You need the books to be as up to date as possible. Give in to change and constant new developments that are an inherent part of electronics.
Teach Techs to Be Techs
So many, if not most instructors have EE degrees. Few actually have Technology degrees which I have come to believe are far better suited to teaching in a technology program. EE degreed instructors tend to teach what they learned in college which is engineering. Engineers analyze and design. But Techs do not. Yet, that is the way most instructors want to teach the subject. Furthermore, most instructors have never even worked as a technician. How can they really know what it is like? And certainly how it has changed so drastically over the years.
The curriculum, books and courses need to be reoriented to teach techs and about the jobs they do today. Engineering tech jobs have all but gone away and it is rediculious to keep teaching subjects that were irrelevant even a few years ago. I urge you all to go out and find out what the tech jobs are today and figure out just what you need to teach. Some of what you teach now is still valid but so much of it is not. You need to teach more systems and less circuits level material. Less math analysis and design and more practical testing, measuring and troubleshooting. And that is not what most of you guys want to hear.
You can find out more detail on all of the topics I listed here by just browsing the proeious entries and the responses.
And please feel free to chime right in here if you agree or disagree.
Thanks for listening.
Friday, May 4, 2007
Change is Hell
I am just wrapping up a Digital Fundamentals course I taught this semester at the community college where I used to be department head. As some of you may know, I left in 2000 to go back to industry simply because of the frustration with academia in general and the delusional practices that keep the curriculum and courses in the last century. I still like to teach so do so occasionally as an adjunct. It gives me a chance to practice what I preach here. Sometimes it is possible to do more good from outside than inside. And it provides me a solid excuse for not having to say "do as I say not as I do". If you get my drift. I do practice what I preach. But I can truthfully say that it is, to coin another phrase, easier said than done. Anyway, this piece is dedicated to all of you guys and gals who are trying hard to update the program to reflect what techs do in industry today and what they REALLY need to know.
First let me say that over the past few years, the college has chosen to make Digital Fundamentals one of those courses that requires few if any prerequisites. While I was department head, a student had to have completed DC, AC and a Solid State Circuits course. Today the prerequisite is DC and College Algebra. What that means is that students come into this course with just some basic DC theory and nothing else. They do not know how a transistor works, or basic circuit concepts. I wasn't really prepared for this.
Yes, I know why the college did this. It is tough to squeeze in all the courses into a four semester, 2-year program so you have to double up on some and make the prerequisites looser. And I also know that you can indeed teach digital without circuit knowledge by just teaching the logic functions and applications. Yet as I have discovered, it leaves the student with a very liminted and somewhat warped view of the digital world. It is tough to present some material especially like how logic gates work, the source and issues regarding propagation delay, rise/fall times, and 3-state logic just to name a few. Very awkward to say the least. But I managed to get through it. But I have a very uneasy feeling that the students got a watered down, or as some of you like to say, dumbed down version of what it really should be. I hate that feelilng. If I had my way, I would juggle things to make sure the courses are set up as they used to be with more relevant prerequisites.
In looking at what techs do today, I have been able to juggle the subject matter to make sure the student gets what is needed. And I can question some of the traditional material to see if it is still relevant. You are probably saying who the devil am I to say that I know what is needed? Easy, I work in industry in a job that lets me clearly see a wide range of tech jobs and what the duties are. It is not like it used to be, believe you me. For example, there are few if any engineering tech jobs left. They are just not needed today given the heavy use of ICs and software design. Most techs install, service, repair, maintain, operated, troubleshoot, test, measure, calibrate, and otherwise take care of electronic equipment. They do NOT analyze or design. That makes some of the subjects we used to teach borderline at best.
Take Boolean circuit minimization and Karnaugh maps for instance. Do we really need to teach that? Techs don't design digital circuits anyway so why bother? Even engineers rarely use manual minimization methods much less Karnaugh maps. It is all done with software today.
This is one of those decision points in updating a course that we all face. This is the "hell" I referred to in the title. My decision was more or less made for me as the state requirements for this course said I should teach Boolean and Karnaugh. So I did. I couldn't legally take it out even if it were the most obsolete procedure in the world. And that really points up a key factor. What the devil do state governments have to do with setting content standards anyway? I suppose for transferrability purposes between state colleges. But, there is no provision for changing or updating these requirements. So the dated and irrelevant material is perpetuated eternally.
Anyway, the state guidelines don't say to what degree each subject has to be taught so I did the bare minimum. At least the students know the procedures and why and when you use them but they are not experts. That level of coverage is about right. And the student goes away with the vocabulary and familiarity with these subjects without really being competent. Just as it probably should be. Now if we can get the textbook authors and publishers to adjust the coverage to better fit the real world.
By the way, I had one instructor tell me, Lou how could you take out that part of the subject matter that is the most fun to teach? Most fun? What that really says is that teachers teach what they know and like and not necessarily what is really needed. But I should be fair and say that most of those instructors are living in denial anyway since the do not have a clue what is important today and not.
The biggest problem I had with this course was the lab. We used to use basic breadboard trainers and TTL ICs to teach digital and I bet most of you still do. Yet, when was the last time you saw an electronic product made with lots of TTL chips? Not for a long time. The way digital circuits are realized today are with embedded controllers and programmable logic devices (PLDs). You can still get TTL (and CMOS) SSI and MSI chips but few if any find their way into new designs. Yet this is what the student learns. Well, not the circuit details becasue they don't know what a transistor is at this point. Another disturbing issue to deal with.
My decision was more practical than relevant. I resorted to using the old breadboard trainers and TTL chips simply nothing else was available. How does one teach a digital lab anyway? I felt bad about this but what else could I do given the time and budget constraints? At least the students learned the logic and got to play around with the various circuits.
Did I teach PLDs? Definitely. I introduced them but did not venture too much into their actual programming even though the college recently invested in the latest Altera FPGA development boards and software. Such an advance device is over kill for a fundamentals course and a huge amount of time is required to learn the programming language and hardware. And what I see in industry is that techs do not design with or program FPGAs or any other PLD. Techs have to know what they are and how they work but not the details of design and programming. That's not just my opinion, it is fact.
One of the professors at the college has reworked his digital labs to completely eliminate the old TTL and trainers and implements all experiments on the Altera FPGA, even the basic gates and flip flop labs. I give him credit for making such an effort to use the latest technology. I wish more professors were willing to learn the latest hardware and incorporate it into their courses. But I feel he went too far. The poor students come into his course with DC under their belt and they immediately start learning the software. Their heads are spinning. I had 5 students in my class who had previously dropped out of this professor's class just because it was too much for them.
Incidentally, I spoke with 5 other instructors teaching digital this semester about what they taught and how. (Yes, 5 other instructors, 3 full time faculty and 2 other adjuncts besides me. Enrollments are really up at the college this semester so lots of teachers were needed, just like the olden days.) Every one of us teachs digital in a different way. Academic freedom and all that. But the variations are so great it got me to worrying about consistency in content. There doesn't seem to be any way to be sure the student comes away with all the basic needs. Instructors do just what they want to do and not so much what they should do. And each one has the same attitude: "What are you going to do, fire me?" You get the picture.
Change is indeed hell. The colleges, the curricula, the courses, the labs, the textbooks and so on are still partly stuck in the past but slowly moving to the future. A real mixed bag. It is a miracle that students graduate with what they need. EE trained instructors are still trying to teach engineering to techs who won't ever do it in real life and will feel disappointed in their tech jobs because their bosses tell them they are not engineers. Fine state of affairs.
Keep plugging away at your courses and curricula to bring them up to date. I feel your pain.
Lou Frenzel
First let me say that over the past few years, the college has chosen to make Digital Fundamentals one of those courses that requires few if any prerequisites. While I was department head, a student had to have completed DC, AC and a Solid State Circuits course. Today the prerequisite is DC and College Algebra. What that means is that students come into this course with just some basic DC theory and nothing else. They do not know how a transistor works, or basic circuit concepts. I wasn't really prepared for this.
Yes, I know why the college did this. It is tough to squeeze in all the courses into a four semester, 2-year program so you have to double up on some and make the prerequisites looser. And I also know that you can indeed teach digital without circuit knowledge by just teaching the logic functions and applications. Yet as I have discovered, it leaves the student with a very liminted and somewhat warped view of the digital world. It is tough to present some material especially like how logic gates work, the source and issues regarding propagation delay, rise/fall times, and 3-state logic just to name a few. Very awkward to say the least. But I managed to get through it. But I have a very uneasy feeling that the students got a watered down, or as some of you like to say, dumbed down version of what it really should be. I hate that feelilng. If I had my way, I would juggle things to make sure the courses are set up as they used to be with more relevant prerequisites.
In looking at what techs do today, I have been able to juggle the subject matter to make sure the student gets what is needed. And I can question some of the traditional material to see if it is still relevant. You are probably saying who the devil am I to say that I know what is needed? Easy, I work in industry in a job that lets me clearly see a wide range of tech jobs and what the duties are. It is not like it used to be, believe you me. For example, there are few if any engineering tech jobs left. They are just not needed today given the heavy use of ICs and software design. Most techs install, service, repair, maintain, operated, troubleshoot, test, measure, calibrate, and otherwise take care of electronic equipment. They do NOT analyze or design. That makes some of the subjects we used to teach borderline at best.
Take Boolean circuit minimization and Karnaugh maps for instance. Do we really need to teach that? Techs don't design digital circuits anyway so why bother? Even engineers rarely use manual minimization methods much less Karnaugh maps. It is all done with software today.
This is one of those decision points in updating a course that we all face. This is the "hell" I referred to in the title. My decision was more or less made for me as the state requirements for this course said I should teach Boolean and Karnaugh. So I did. I couldn't legally take it out even if it were the most obsolete procedure in the world. And that really points up a key factor. What the devil do state governments have to do with setting content standards anyway? I suppose for transferrability purposes between state colleges. But, there is no provision for changing or updating these requirements. So the dated and irrelevant material is perpetuated eternally.
Anyway, the state guidelines don't say to what degree each subject has to be taught so I did the bare minimum. At least the students know the procedures and why and when you use them but they are not experts. That level of coverage is about right. And the student goes away with the vocabulary and familiarity with these subjects without really being competent. Just as it probably should be. Now if we can get the textbook authors and publishers to adjust the coverage to better fit the real world.
By the way, I had one instructor tell me, Lou how could you take out that part of the subject matter that is the most fun to teach? Most fun? What that really says is that teachers teach what they know and like and not necessarily what is really needed. But I should be fair and say that most of those instructors are living in denial anyway since the do not have a clue what is important today and not.
The biggest problem I had with this course was the lab. We used to use basic breadboard trainers and TTL ICs to teach digital and I bet most of you still do. Yet, when was the last time you saw an electronic product made with lots of TTL chips? Not for a long time. The way digital circuits are realized today are with embedded controllers and programmable logic devices (PLDs). You can still get TTL (and CMOS) SSI and MSI chips but few if any find their way into new designs. Yet this is what the student learns. Well, not the circuit details becasue they don't know what a transistor is at this point. Another disturbing issue to deal with.
My decision was more practical than relevant. I resorted to using the old breadboard trainers and TTL chips simply nothing else was available. How does one teach a digital lab anyway? I felt bad about this but what else could I do given the time and budget constraints? At least the students learned the logic and got to play around with the various circuits.
Did I teach PLDs? Definitely. I introduced them but did not venture too much into their actual programming even though the college recently invested in the latest Altera FPGA development boards and software. Such an advance device is over kill for a fundamentals course and a huge amount of time is required to learn the programming language and hardware. And what I see in industry is that techs do not design with or program FPGAs or any other PLD. Techs have to know what they are and how they work but not the details of design and programming. That's not just my opinion, it is fact.
One of the professors at the college has reworked his digital labs to completely eliminate the old TTL and trainers and implements all experiments on the Altera FPGA, even the basic gates and flip flop labs. I give him credit for making such an effort to use the latest technology. I wish more professors were willing to learn the latest hardware and incorporate it into their courses. But I feel he went too far. The poor students come into his course with DC under their belt and they immediately start learning the software. Their heads are spinning. I had 5 students in my class who had previously dropped out of this professor's class just because it was too much for them.
Incidentally, I spoke with 5 other instructors teaching digital this semester about what they taught and how. (Yes, 5 other instructors, 3 full time faculty and 2 other adjuncts besides me. Enrollments are really up at the college this semester so lots of teachers were needed, just like the olden days.) Every one of us teachs digital in a different way. Academic freedom and all that. But the variations are so great it got me to worrying about consistency in content. There doesn't seem to be any way to be sure the student comes away with all the basic needs. Instructors do just what they want to do and not so much what they should do. And each one has the same attitude: "What are you going to do, fire me?" You get the picture.
Change is indeed hell. The colleges, the curricula, the courses, the labs, the textbooks and so on are still partly stuck in the past but slowly moving to the future. A real mixed bag. It is a miracle that students graduate with what they need. EE trained instructors are still trying to teach engineering to techs who won't ever do it in real life and will feel disappointed in their tech jobs because their bosses tell them they are not engineers. Fine state of affairs.
Keep plugging away at your courses and curricula to bring them up to date. I feel your pain.
Lou Frenzel
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