An Applied Electromagnetics Course with a Conceiving-Designing-Implementing-Operating Approach in Engineering Education

This paper describes and discusses the implementation of a project-based undergraduate course on applied electromagnetics in electronics engineering with a conceiving-designing-implementing-operating (CDIO) approach involving active project-based learning (PBL). The course, which requires a combination of mathematical and physics concepts for its completion, allows students to understand the principles of electromagnetic transmission theory in wireless communication systems. This paper presents the course proposal, its project description, and results hinting at the relationship with the CDIO process. The proposed projects allow students to engage in core concepts such as complex vectors, Maxwell’s equations, boundary conditions, Poynting\u27s theorem, uniform plane waves, reflection and transmission of waves, waveguides, cavity resonators, and computer-assisted design. The proposed methodology results suggest that students lowered their perception of the difficulty of the course, and most students recognized a better learning process of the core concepts for this course. In addition, students’ final course grades showed an average improvement of approximately 6% compared with the final grades of other groups with different methodologies

Software for the Support of Learning and Teaching in Electromagnetics

Abstract The study of Electromagnetics is required in most electrical engineering graduate and undergraduate curricula. Traditional methods for teaching Electromagnetics are abstract, theoretical and filled with large number of mathematical equations. Thus, they are not anymore appropriate. The solution is to provide to both professors and students an interactive software with a simplified graphical interface to best teach and learn fundamentals of Electromagnetism. Interactive resources have demonstrated that they were attractive and encouraged the students to be active and autonomous. The aim of this work is to present such interactive software. This software introduces the students to fundamentals of Electromagnetics and provides them with better ways to understand complicated concepts. It uses the calculation functions of Matlab, combined with the powerful graphical user interfaces of Java

Difficulties in teaching electromagnetism: an eight year experience at Pierre and Marie Curie University

We will begin by outlining the details of how electromagnetics are taught in the  electrical engineering program offered at Pierre and Marie Curie University (a French example) from the undergraduate to the Masters degree levels.  We will also discuss how our methods are and should be adapted to teach waves propagation without discouraging students

Mitigating the Hazard of Lightning Injury and Death across Africa

Lightning injuries, deaths, and the economic consequences of lightning damage to property and infrastructure continue to be a significant public health challenge and economic development issue in many tropical and subtropical areas of the world, especially sub-Saharan Africa. This chapter will discuss the scope of the hazard, known risk factors including common cultural beliefs that inhibit public education, existing data sources, medical effects and long-term disability, lightning formation and detection, injury mechanisms, existing lightning safety programs and their challenges, and the work being done to decrease injuries, death, and property damage from lightning in Africa by the African Centres for Lightning and Electromagnetics Network (ACLENet)

Work in Progress: Progress of the NSF RED Revolution

The National Science Foundation (NSF) REvolutionizing engineering and computer science Departments (RED) program is an important initiative in engineering education. The goals of RED are to “enable engineering and computer science departments to lead the nation by successfully achieving significant sustainable changes necessary to overcome longstanding issues in their undergraduate programs and educate inclusive communities of engineering and computer science students prepared to solve 21st-century challenges.” In 2015, six RED projects were funded followed by seven in 2016 and six more in 2017, bringing the total number of projects to 19. In addition, NSF funded REDPAR (RED Participatory Action Research), the collaborative effort between researchers at Rose-Hulman and the University of Washington to facilitate communication and collaboration among the RED teams and to study the processes followed by RED teams. This work in progress provides a brief overview of the program and current progress of some projects. We highlight the diversity of current RED projects through updates from eight projects across the three cohorts: four from Cohort 1: Arizona State University, Colorado State University, Oregon State University, and the University of San Diego, three from Cohort 2: Boise State University, Rowan University, Virginia Tech, and one from Cohort 3: Georgia Tech. Updates are also included from the REDPAR team about the RED Consortium (REDCON) and research that crosses the consortium. We hope that this paper will help the engineering education community to learn how these projects are changing the landscape of engineering education in the USA and consider approaches for enacting change on other campuses

Outreach and identity development: New perspectives on college student persistence

pre-printCollege student persistence continues to pose challenges for higher education institutions, despite over 40 years of research. Although persistence is studied from many different angles, the majority of studies examining the causes of and cures for students' departure from college reflect the importance of engagement in the higher education environment. An innovative type of engagement is involving college students in high school outreach. This article reports on a study involving 19 college students who participated in a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded project intended to increase the enrollment and persistence of engineering students, specifically examining how engaging in outreach activities developed participants' views of themselves as engineers. We found that outreach activities incorporated several types of engagement and that participants engaged in outreach began to develop a professional engineering identity, both of which are linked to college student persistence. The study's implications for research and practice are discussed

The development of case-based learning for an antenna engineering course using folklore

Several subjects, including antenna engineering in a communication engineering program, is a math-intensive subject where most students say that it is difficult to understand and visualize. Students are unable to relate theoretical knowledge to real world applications. To overcome this issue, we proposed to motivate students’ curiosity using fun and interesting ways of teaching based on real cases in the community. In an antenna engineering course, there are folklores that performance of an antenna can be improved by attaching items such as basins to the antenna or using everyday objects as an antenna. Theoretical explanations have not been developed yet. In this research, we aim to propose the idea of using folklores as a case-based learning (CBL) exercise. Based on the process of CBL, a 15-week course plan starts with establishing the case in the first week, followed by weeks of theoretical study, lectures and group discussions. Group discussions on the case are established on the 5th and the 10th weeks to share the problems and the new findings. The results of the study are presented in the 15th week. Impressively, the pre-evaluating result shows that 97.5% of students who never attend an antenna engineering class were interested in joining the challenge. The proposed idea will be applied in an antenna engineering course for 4th year students in communication engineering, at the University of Phayao, in the first semester of the 2017 academic year in August 2017

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2016

This Research Report presents the FY16 research statistics and contributions of the Graduate School of Engineering and Management (EN) at AFIT. AFIT research interests and faculty expertise cover a broad spectrum of technical areas related to USAF needs, as reflected by the range of topics addressed in the faculty and student publications listed in this report. In most cases, the research work reported herein is directly sponsored by one or more USAF or DOD agencies. AFIT welcomes the opportunity to conduct research on additional topics of interest to the USAF, DOD, and other federal organizations when adequate manpower and financial resources are available and/or provided by a sponsor. In addition, AFIT provides research collaboration and technology transfer benefits to the public through Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs)

WPI Research, 2017

https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/wpiresearch-all/1003/thumbnail.jp

Oceanus.

v. 26, no. 4 (1983