5/8/2010

Electrical and Comptuer Engineering Wrap-up session

Attending: Chris Cracin, John Jacocks, Bill Taylor, Harvey Hoffman, Jeff Dennenberg, Jack Beal, Sherman Poltney, Jerry Sergent and Douglas Lyon (Secretary pro tem).

Start time: 12:00

CR245L – Digital Design I, Chris could not get the altera software to work because he asked Kostas instead of asking Doug. So, we did not use altera this term. Chris will bring the altera hardware back from BNW.

CR245 Lecture – Digital Design I, Jack Beal: We covered everything but the ADC and DAC topics. Two regular exams and 8 regular hw assignments. Students were very late at handing in the HW.

The textbook was a problem. They use different notation. Student performance was mixed. Poor students did not show up regularly. Students disappeared during the break. This course is taken by sophomores in the second term. The once a week format does not help matters. Only one student was a part-time student.

Jerry: ECE505 (Advanced Power Electronics) ECE496, Fault analysis of power systems, CR/EE/ME 390, Senior Project.

ECE505: Went great. 8 students. Did the HW on time. People who traveled for work always let me know.

ECE496: The book was a good theory book, but was only good for theory and not for practice. The book was swapped out early in the term and this lead to a much better book. We had a lot of numerical analysis topics.

In Design Project, the students were non-responsive. Students would not work when asked. Students did all nighters and did not finish. Presentations were good. Next term, we are going to provide grades on progress reports and attenance. In some groups, members did not contribute at all. Some students did not come to class on time.

Douglas Lyon: Taught ECE432 (Biomedical Imaging), CR346 (Computer Arch), SW410, Enterprise Java.

We had problems with attendance in things like the midterm for Computer Architecture and biomedical imaging. Some students are going to flunk this term. We need new books for all these courses. I suppose that I should write one...but I am getting burned out on writing books.