Some ideas for a new style of electricalengineering degree course

G.A. Battersby, M.Eng., Ph.D., C.Eng., F.I.E.E., M.lnst.M.C, and K.B. Reed,B.Sc.(Eng.), C.Eng., F.I.E.E., F.I.E.R.E.

Indexing term: Education and training

Abstract: The paper aims to provide a basis for discussion of a new type of degree course centred on teachingfrom design. The type of accommodation required for this type of course is discussed, and suggestions for usingsimilar accommodation for more traditional courses are made. The course, the accommodation and the assess-ment are seen as a new challenge for students and staff; with graduates receiving an education and trainingmore suited to the needs of present day industry.

1 Introduction

In April 1981, the DES organised a conference at whichrepresentatives from engineering departments in the poly-technics met to decide upon a strategy for engineering edu-cation in the polytechnics following the Finniston Report[1]. Surprisingly, the conference debate produced anumber of agreed statements [2], statements which, whenexamined, turned out to be necessarily vague. Here,however, was a unique opportunity to devise new pro-grammes of study for the education and training of engi-neers which would be unfettered by traditional approachesto subjects. The brave new approach to undergraduatecourses, however, was swamped by the corporate inabilityof engineering teachers, institutions and, eventually, theCNAA Engineering Boards to accept that skills other thananalytical skills could develop students to degree-awardstatus, despite the clear inclinations of numerous individ-ual participants. So ingrained is the habit that collectiveconviction failed to make the break with the past. Never-theless, the agreement to include engineering applicationsand to develop this as a feature of future courses wasaccepted and has taken place.

Another feature of engineering education over the lastfew years is that teachers are being forced further awayfrom the chalk face, and means of improving the teachingand its relevance are becoming of paramount importanceunder the burden of bureaucratic pressures and imposedeconomies from bodies like the NAB, UGC, CNAA andIEE. One result is that larger classes, shorter curriculumhours and other measures are increasingly separating stu-dents and staff to the point where the benefits of a meetingof minds (benefits equally important, even if different, tothe weaker and stronger students) are diminishing. At thesame time, laboratory activities, especially in the elec-tronics field* are increasingly concerned with apparatus ofreducing size; access to a microcomputer or computer ter-minal is opening up a whole range of opportunities todevelop design and simulation techniques. These changesnecessitate changes in the very nature of 'laboratory' workand accommodation, requiring much more time seated infront of a 'desk' rather than standing at a bench or perchedon a bar stool. Nor can, or should, exercises be parcelledinto discrete packages of two or three hours duration, with

Paper 3523A (S5), first received 17th April and in revised form 3rd July 1984Dr. Battersby is Head of the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,Thames Polytechnic, and Mr. Reed is Deputy Director of Thames Polytechnic,Wellington Street, London SE18 6PF, England

students responding to the close guidance of laboratorysheets (means and methods much more appropriate tosome first-year studies where basic principles are seen,more or less, to be borne out in practice). Students alsorequire the opportunity to develop their interests and tofurther their studies outside formal, and reducing, super-vised hours prescribed by the course, and they can only dothis if they have a place to work.

The reasons, therefore, for writing this paper are thatthe authors believe that an opportunity was lost followingthe April 1981 conference to design a completely new typeof electrical and/or electronics course, and that, in order toeducate electrical engineering students properly for thefuture, a different approach to laboratory work is required.The next few Sections attempt to provide a vision of whatthe new course would be like and the way in which itwould be accommodated.

2 Concept

The basic concept of the new course is to build every partof it on and around design, in a manner similar to manyarchitecture courses in this country and other courses inNorth America [3]. That is, a proactive rather than a reac-tive approach, with students introduced to design themoment they cross the threshold of the university or poly-technic. In the early stages of the course, the design islikely to be naive or even trivial, but, like all practicalskills, this will develop as the course proceeds. The theoryand analysis for the course will just be sufficient to supportthe course, and the lecturing hours will be reduced fromthat of 'standard' electrical courses. Students will have tobe given time for private and team study and investigationto provide the background to the solution of the designproblems. In addition, each student should have a workplace in a laboratory which is his alone in the departmentwhere he can undertake supporting work, have readyaccess to relevant literature and equipment and, byarrangement, be able to seek guidance.

3 Aim

The aim of the course will be to produce electrical andelectronics engineers who have a distinctive feel for synthe-sis rather than analysis, and thus engender an attitude, notof exhaustion from endeavouring to cope with a vast widthof theoretical study, but of acquiring the working habit,when addressing a problem, of seeking relevant back-ground and supporting factors and techniques as a matter

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of routine; a habit to foster continual development over afull career, a feature much more important for the futurethan in the past. The students will learn about the charac-teristics of devices instead of analysing how they work. Insome cases the work will be extended to show how thedevice characteristics can be modified by internal or exter-nal change. In this way the student will acquire knowledgeand experience and will develop problem-solving abilitiesso that the solution of engineering problems is notrestricted to the answering, or not, of tutorial problems.The student should be allowed to develop his or her ownstudy methods to cope with the immediate tasks in hand.

4 Curriculum

4.1 Existing coursesIt will be assumed here that, as an example, the course isdirected towards electronics, instrumentation and control.A traditional course would probably have a first-year cur-riculum as follows:

Electrical and electronic principlesMathematicsComputingMechanical technologyLaboratory work

In many courses the principles dwell upon the engineering-science aspects, and in the early years tend to dissociatethe practice from the theory. Bolton's book on electromag-netism [4], for example, goes some way to overcomingthis, but further advances are possible and necessary.

The mathematics in most engineering courses twentyyears or so ago came close to that required by those study-ing for a specialised degree in mathematics. The breadth ofmathematics taught on most courses has been reducedover the years, but in many cases the mathematics is stillnot regarded as only another tool in the engineer'stoolbox.

Computing is often a matter of getting to grips with anew language and little more. Where applications areintroduced, they tend to be contrived. It should, however,be possible to link this more closely with the electrical andelectronic engineering and introduce computer graphicsand CAD.

Finally, mechanical technology has either been left outof many courses because it seems to be irrelevant or of noparticular interest to electronic engineers, or to be taughtin a similar fashion to the way it is taught to specialistmechanical engineers. Neither of these approaches iswholly realistic. Electronic engineers cannot cut themselvesoff entirely from the problems of mechanical engineers,neither do such students wish to be overburdened withirrelevant mechanical engineering science.

4.2 Proposed coursesThe first year of the new course might be defined asfollows:

Design of simple electrical and electronic circuitsApplication of computer programmingMechanical technologyDesign of systemsProject

The objective of this first year of study would be for thestudents to learn through doing rather than by being lec-tured to. Kirchhoff's laws and Thevenin's theoremwould not be taught, but they would be formulated by thestudents by experiment in the laboratory with minimumguidance from the teachers. The students would then go on

to design simple circuits to perform specific tasks. Thecomputer applications would be aimed at getting studentsto use existing packages at an early stage and to use thecomputer for design work. The mechanical technologywould be taught by demonstration and laboratory workand would only cover those aspects needed later for aproper understanding of the problems associated with thecontrol of processes and machinery. The system designmust inevitably be undertaken at a rather elementary levelat this stage, but the broad overall requirement of, forexample, a power system, a telephone system or a manu-facturing system could be investigated as a group study orproject.

4.3 Subsequent yearsEach year will follow a similar pattern, the necessarymathematics being taught as it is required. The particularmathematics topics will be introduced by teachers, andvarious learning methods used for consolidation. It isanticipated that about two-thirds of the organised coursetime will be spent at the laboratory workplace eitherexperimenting or designing. Private study by each studentwill also need to be an important feature of the course. Thefinal-year project will be one of substantial proportions.

5 Assessment

The matter on which progress on this type of course hasfoundered in the past is: how will the course provide theintellectual demands which traditionally taught coursesmake on students? We must first refer to the architectureschools where similar courses are offered and intellectuallevels appropriate to a degree are acknowledged, but, moreparticularly, we need to consider the conceptual demandsthat will be made upon students in a course of this natureand the greater intellectual ability needed to assimilatethese concepts.

It is clear that traditional three-hour written exami-nations will be inappropriate to much of this type ofcourse. It will be a challenge to devise alternatives whichprovide a fair and credible means, acceptable to teachers,external examiners and validating bodies, without theexaminations prescribing the nature of the course, which isfirmly the situation we find ourselves in now. It is, ofcourse, the case that written papers isolate the examinerfrom the examined, and the process is thereby seen to beindependent of the personal relationships between the twoand, therefore, to be as fair as can be. Whilst there is greatmerit in this, the price of artificiality is too high and can nolonger be paid. Written papers can examine analyticalskills and some design skills but not the ability to makethings work and to be inventive. The three subjects, designof electrical and electronic circuits, mechanical technologyand design of systems in our 'fictitious' course might havea short written paper of, say, \\ hours which would allowstudents to demonstrate their understanding of fundamen-tal principles. For both design of systems and design ofelectrical and electronic circuits, the submission of thedesigns and a 'work' mark, discussed with students, couldform part of the assessment. These would take intoaccount the way in which the design was executed and theunderstanding which the student shows in the presen-tation. In the design of systems, which is seen as a groupactivity, the contribution of each member of the groupwould have to be clearly identified. The mechanical tech-nology would include laboratory work as part of theassessment for the subject. Finally, the project report,

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together with informal or formal interviews, would providethe last strand of the assessment.

6 Accommodation

As mentioned earlier, students in both this new style ofcourse and existing courses need the opportunity todevelop their interests and to further their studies outsidethe formal supervised hours of the course. This can only bedone successfully, in the authors' view, by providing eachstudent with a workplace of his or her own. The library isoften unsuitable, and access to the appropriate facilities,such as terminals, test gear, components etc., is important.They should also be encouraged to work in groups, and tobe able to discuss and exchange ideas in a proper setting.With all these factors in mind, the suggestion is that thegreater area of the laboratories of an engineering depart-ment are re-equipped with work places, one for eachsecond- and third-year student, grouped to encourage ameasure of both interaction and privacy and lined withtest gear and literature. Each major area will be theresponsibility of a member of the teaching staff and thetechnical staff, and teachers will be timetabled to theseareas, not to laboratory classes. Thus the design and labor-atory work will be carried out in a less formal atmosphereand the curriculum hours reduced. Each of these labor-atories will be assigned topics for development, includingresearch programmes, and much of the work for all stu-dents who work there will be related, at one level oranother (including final year projects), to these topics.Some of the topics will change every two or three years,and each student will change his workplace every twoterms or so, in the meantime having access to the literatureand apparatus in all areas.

Students will be given separate or group tasks related toone of the topics assigned to their area and will beexpected to devise their own programme running overmany weeks, even over a whole term or semester. Whilstthe broad direction may be the responsibility of a particu-lar teacher, day-to-day guidance, criticism and assistancewill be given by teachers timetabled to their area. Thework will be assessed, preferably with the direct involve-ment of the student, in banded categories. The mainburden for progress should devolve onto the student, andshould be seen to do so.

There will be those who will be reluctant to consider

these changes on grounds of space and teaching capacity,but there are promising indications that these may not beas constraining as first thoughts suggest. The DES spacenorms for engineering students imply 6-7 square metres oflaboratory area per FTE, and the discontinuation of labor-atory programmes on a course-by-course basis can liberatea fair number of hours in a department, for reallocation forthe supervision of the newly formed areas.

It is held by the authors that engineering applicationsand practice undertaken in this way would be closer to thereal world and would produce a deeper commitment andinvolvement of students (and staff) than many of thepresent more highly structured ways to be found in poly-technics and universities.

7 Conclusions

The authors hold that a traditional approach to engineer-ing higher education is failing to meet Britain's needs. Thisis partly because many of the graduates, in the process ofabsorbing the range of theoretical studies largely divorcedfrom the real world or, at best, contrived to relate to it,have not achieved a positive attitude to the creative solu-tion of engineering developments. The position is likely tocontinue whilst cours.es are judged mainly on academiccontent and width, rather than on the formation ofworking skills and habits. To convert courses to satisfythese ends is a challenging task and one which will inevita-bly lead to the criticism of reduced standards and lessobjectivity from many who might now be regarded as theproponents of the existing system, which has developedtoo far into a world of its own. It is thought that a differentview might be found among those working in competitiveindustry, more immediately the medium-size estab-lishments, who rely on being able to recruit young engi-neers to tackle their work with initiative and self reliance.

8 References

1 'Engineering our future': Report of the Committee of Inquiry into theengineering profession. Chairman: Sir Montague Finniston FRS

2 'The way ahead': Resolutions from DES engineering conference, April1981

3 'Project methods in higher education': Goodlad (Ed.), published by theSociety for Research into Higher Education

4 BOLTON, B.: 'Electromagnetism and its applications' (Van NostrandReinhold)

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