Nielsen, Jens Frederik Dalsgaard

Nielsen, Kirsten Mølgaard

This paper describes the integration of IT in the education of electronic and computer technology engineers at Institute of Electronic Systems, Aalborg Uni-versity, Denmark. At the Institute Information Technology is an important tool in the aspects of the education as well as for communication among students and teachers

    Aalborg UniversitetInformation Technology in project-organized electronic and computer technologyengineering educationNielsen, Kirsten Mølgaard; Nielsen, Jens Frederik D.Publication date:1999Document VersionOgså kaldet Forlagets PDFLink to publication from Aalborg UniversityCitation for published version (APA):Nielsen, K. M., & Nielsen, J. F. D. (1999). Information Technology in project-organized electronic and computertechnology engineering education.General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright ownersand it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.            ? Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.            ? You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain            ? You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ?Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at vbn@aub.aau.dk providing details, and we will remove access tothe work immediately and investigate your claim.Downloaded from vbn.aau.dk on: April 25, 2017Information Technology in project-organized electronic and computertechnology engineering educationNielsen, Kirsten Mølgaard & Nielsen, Jens DalsgaardDepartment of Control EngineeringInstitute for Electronic SystemsAalborg UniversityFredrik Bajers Vej 7C, DK 9220 Aalborg East, DenmarkPhone +45 9635 8738 fax +45 9815 1739email : {kmn,jdn}@control.auc.dkAbstractThis paper describes the integration of IT in the education of electronic andcomputer technology engineers at Institute of Electronic Systems, Aalborg Uni-versity, Denmark.  At the Institute Information Technology is an important toolin the aspects of the education as well as for communication among students andteachers.Key words: Information Technology, engineering education, project organizedstudiesIntroduction     At Aalborg University the cur-riculum for the education in engi-neering as well as in natural scienceis project organized studies. Theprojects can be design-oriented prob-lems, which can be solved by theoriesand knowledge from lectures or it canbe problem-oriented work dealing withunsolved problems in science and in-dustry. In many ways the project workreflects the work process in an in-dustrial company.The duration of each project is onesemester. In a semester half of thetime is distributed to project workand half to courses related to theproject or to the curriculum.A project-group consists of 4 to 6students. Each project-group requiresthe use of an office at the univer-sity and continual supervision by afaculty member. This curriculum de-mands - in addition to the facilitiesin traditional universities - goodfacilities for inter-communicationamong the student within a projectgroup and for communication betweenthe project group and the supervisor.These demands has be important in thedevelopment of the IT structure atthe Institute of Electronic Systems.The IT-structure in Instituteof Electronic Systems     The main objective of the IT in-fra structure is to offer a uniformlocation independent, cost effectiveand high performing IT environmentfor faculty staff, Ph.D., master andbachelor students with no differencein access. The system serves approxi-mately 150 VIPs and 400 students. TheIT system is at the moment based onSUN UNIX enterprice 450 quad CPU ma-chines and older SUN UNIX server ma-chines all interconnected by 100 Mbitnetworking. The system provides stan-dard facilities as mail, news, weband a common file system. The back-bone network is connected to the dan-ish 140 Mbit research network.     The network is open 24 hours aday and the use of the system is un-limited to students as well as fac-ulty staff. The system is locally ac-cessible through Linux based disklessX-terminals (known as kompromiX),windows PC's as well as Linux and lo-cal SUN workstations.So computing power is available ownmachinery as well as SUN UNIX loginmachines.     The students also have access tothe general network from private com-puters in the students project roomsand via modems and telephone networkor cable TV network from their flatsand student hostels.     Each student room housing 4 - 6students is equipped with an X-terminal, and each staff member andPh.D. students have their own PCand/or X-terminal. In addition thereis access to the general computer fa-cilities in laboratories and in lec-ture rooms.     The IT solution offers internetaccess in addition with Web, email,news, ftp and a set of software pack-ages relevant to the project work andcourses. Major software packages areMatlab, simulink, LaTeX and officesuites. Besides these commercialpackages a very large number of pub-lic domain UNIX/Linux software isavailable. The main principle is tobase the system on public domain SWas much as possible to obtain a costeffective system.     The laboratories are an inte-grated part of the IT-infrastructurewith the same facilities as in proj-ect rooms and in addition to that anumber of packages for integration oflaboratory setups. Packages likeVxWorks is the basis and makes itpossible to do laboratory tests anddata collection and control locallyas well remote.Information technology used inthe education system.     For the students studying fulltime at the university the projectwork is mainly carried out at theuniversity. The project work must bedone in a close collaboration betweenthe students in a group as the re-sults must be presented in a jointreport. The content of this report isthe basis for the examination of eachstudent in the group. This conceptfor project work implicates demandson a well functioning communicationand a consistent editing and updatingof documents.     Information technology can be apart of the solution of these prob-lems. In the following relevant useof IT implemented in the project workin the engineering education are pre-sented.     As the students are studyingelectronics and computer technologysoftware development nearly always isan integrated part of the project. Aselection of programming languagessuitable for different applicationsand problems are offered. Examplesare C, C++ and Java. In addition pro-jects often includes demands for ad-vanced mathematical calculations. Forthis purpose the tools Matlab, Simu-link and Mable are available to thestudents.     Most projects include work on asetup in laboratory or in industry.It can convenient to be able to doremote data collection or control ona setup. The VxWorks offers thesepossibilities.     Software engineering and elec-tronic are disciplines undergoing afast evolution. To obtain the latestinternational results the internet isa useful tool.     Information technology can be auseful help in an effective supervi-sion of a student project. Email is agood and well functioning supplementto the weekly meetings between theproject group and the supervisor. Itgives the opportunity of quick ques-tions and answers when problems sud-denly appear in the projects. Discus-sions of main issues within the proj-ect have advantages of face to facegroup meetings.     In a project carried out in agroup of students the updating ofdocumentation and report writing arecomplex. To solve this problem thesystem offers tools for informationexchange in project environment. Anexample of such a tool is Basic Sup-port for Cooperative Work (BSCW). TheBSCW acts as a modern file server do-ing all the trivial management offolders, reference and documents mak-ing it easier to keep the comprehen-sive view of the project, the docu-mentation and the report.     In 1998 a research project hasbeen established for development of anew environment for cooperative col-laboration for students and facultymembers.     Half time of a semester is usedfor courses. The main concept inthese courses is a two hours lecturefollowed by two hours exercises. Thelecture plan, the topics for the lec-tures and the exercises are presentedon a semester homepage. After thelectures exercise solutions are pre-sented at the homepage.     As a new initiative several pro-gramming courses are accessible asonline courses. The idea behind theconcept is that the easiest way topick up programming languages is byshort introductions and as much handson experience as possible. Thecourses are a combination of on-linelecture notes supplemented by litera-ture references and programming exam-ples. The exercises are programmingproblems to be solved online with ac-cess to online help and solutions.     Four years ago a technical col-lege situated 300 km from the mainuniversity was associated to the uni-versity. A consequence of this isthat several engineering specializa-tion are offered on two locations andserved by one group of faculty staff.For this purpose the above mentionedcommunication and course tools areheavily used for distance education.In addition a direct high-speed net-work link has been implemented be-tween the two locations. As a supple-ment a video conference system is es-tablished. The system makes it possi-ble to see each other on screens, totalk, to show a blackboard and to faxdocuments. Some of the meetings be-tween project groups and supervisorsand a number of courses are success-fully arranged via this system afterimportant introducing face to facemeetings.     Life long education and openuniversity courses is a fast growingpart of the university education sys-tem. The students attached to thispart of the education system aretypically permanently employed andsettled in all parts of the country.The studies are mainly based on home-work in combination with educationalweekends at the university. The in-formation technology based communica-tion systems and information exchangesystems as well as online courses arean evident and important part of theeducation.Evolution and Implementation     The basic principle in introduc-tion of IT in the institute for edu-cational purposes is the individualright to choose the level of ambi-tion. No one has been forced to inte-grate IT in education but all has theopportunity to do it. This is re-garded as one of the main reasons tothe unproblematic IT evolution in theinstitute.Security     When dealing with open IT sys-tems security principles must be han-dled in an operative manner. For thatreason critical applications like fi-nance is totally isolated from thegeneral IT system. The security isbased on a combination of supervisionand high internal justice among thestudents. Abnormal behavior is veryseldom. Penalties are ranged fromwarnings to lose of permissions touse the IT infra structure and invery extreme cases involvement of le-gal authorities.Funding     In Denmark education is as aprinciple free for everybody and theuniversities are financed by the gov-ernment. This set some natural limitson budgets. To obtain an optimal out-come of the resources a basic princi-ple is to base the IT infrastructureon public domain software as much ofpossible. It has shown to be a soundway to go.ConclusionThe purpose of paper has been to de-scribe the integration of InformationTechnology in an electrical and elec-tronic engineering education. Thecombination of Information Technologyand modern educational principles asproject oriented work in combinationwith courses has shown good results.In addition distance education andopen university courses take advan-tage of the described concept.References[1]Kjersdam, Finn & Enemark, StTheAalborg Experiment, ProjectInnovation in University Education,Aalborg University Press, 1994,ISBN 87-7307-480-2.[2]Activity Report 1996-97, Depart-ment of Control Engineering, AalborgUniversity, Denmark, 1997, ISSN 0908-1208[3]M. Knudsen, J. Nørgaard Nielsen,j.Østergaard, J. Dalsgaard Nielsen, N.Jørgensen “ An Interactive MultimediaBased Instruction in ExperimentalModeling – Integrating Matlab with anAuthoring Program” Proceedings of 4-th International Conference computerAided Engineering Education, SEP 11-13, 1997, Krakov, Poland.[4]J. Nørgaard Nielsen, M. Knudsen,J. Dalsgaard Nielsen, J. Østergaard,N. Jørgensen “ Network-based DatabaseCourse” Proceedings of 4-th Interna-tional Conference computer Aided En-gineering Education, SEP 11-13, 1997,Krakov, Poland.[5]Borch O., Kierkegaard B., KnudsenM., Nielsen K.M. ”Distributed ProjectWork”. CALISCE 98 4 th InternationalConference on computer Aided Learningand Instruction in Science and Engi-neering. Chalmers University of Tech-nology, Sweden, June 15- 17, 1998.

Information Technology in project-organized electronic and computer technology engineering education

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

VBN