Paper ID #6709

Exploiting a Disruptive Technology to Actively Engage Students in the Learn-ing Process

Dr. John M Robertson, Arizona State University, Polytechnic campus

John Robertson, PhD, is a Professor in the Engineering Department at Arizona State University Poly-technic where he specializes in instrumentation and semiconductor technology. His research interestsinclude process control and its application to educational development. He was formerly an executivewith Motorola and now participates in many senior technical training programs with local companies.

Prof. Kathleen Meehan, Virginia Tech

Kathleen Meehan is presently an Associate Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Com-puter Engineering at Virginia Tech. Her previous academic positions were at at the University of Denverand West Virginia University. Prior to moving in academia, she was employed at Lytel, Inc., PolaroidCorporation, and Biocontrol Technology. She received her B.S.E.E. from Manhattan College and herM.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois - Urbana/Champaign under the direction of Prof. NickHolonyak, Jr. Her areas of research include design of optoelectronic materials, devices, and systems;optical spectroscopy; high heat load packaging; and electrical engineering pedagogy.

Dr. Robert John Bowman, Rochester Institute of Technology (COE)

Robert J. Bowman has held faculty positions at the University of Utah, the University of Vermont, theUniversity of Rochester, and Rochester Institute of Technology and has consulted or has held engineer-ing positions with a number of companies. He was Director of Analog and Mixed-Signal Engineeringat LSI Logic until 2001 and then became Department Head of Electrical Engineering at RIT. Dr. Bow-man is now Professor of Electrical Engineering and Lab Director of the RIT Analog Devices IntegratedMicrosystems Laboratory. His areas of interest include analog integrated circuit design and technology,semiconductor device physics, and integrated transducers. His current research work is concentrated onsmart MEMs sensors, miniature near-field antennas, thin film acoustic cavity resonators, and devices andcircuits fabricated in thin film, crystalline silicon on glass.

Prof. Kenneth A Connor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Kenneth Connor is a professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering,where he teaches courses on plasma physics, electromagnetics, electronics and instrumentation, electricpower, and general engineering. His research involves plasma physics, electromagnetics, photonics, en-gineering education, diversity in the engineering workforce, and technology enhanced learning. Sincejoining the Rensselaer faculty in 1974, he has been continuously involved in research programs at suchplaces as Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Universities of Texas and Wisconsin in the U.S., Kyotoand Nagoya Universities in Japan, the Ioffe Institute in Russia, and Kharkov Institute of Physics and Tech-nology in Ukraine. He was ECSE Department Head from 2001-2008 and served on the board of the ECEDepartment Heads Association from 2003-2008. He is presently the Education Director for the SMARTLIGHTING NSF ERC.

Mr. Douglas A Mercer, Analog Devices Inc.

Doug Mercer received the B.S.E.E degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in 1977. He has 35 yearsexperience in the linear IC industry in the design and development of high resolution and high speed dataconverter products. Since joining Analog Devices in 1977 he has contributed directly or indirectly tomore than 30 commercial products. He holds 13 patents. He was a full time Analog Devices employeeuntil 2009, the last 14 years as an ADI Fellow, the highest level of technical contributor at ADI. Since2009 he has transitioned to the role of Consulting Fellow at ADI working part time, most recently in thearea of undergraduate EE education outreach and development, principally as ADI’s point of contact withRensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

c©American Society for Engineering Education, 2013

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Exploiting a Disruptive Technology to Actively Engage

Students in the Learning Process

Abstract

Once every decade or so, a disruptive technology appears that has the potential to revolutionize

electrical and computer engineering (ECE) education. This paper considers the impact of one of

the most recent examples: a USB-powered instrument called Analog Discovery that is cheap

enough for students to own personally. Students are no longer bound by the constraints of fixed

space, equipment, and schedules in their institution to conduct experiments. Instructional

materials are posted for free and advice is provided by early adopters, working engineers and

hobbyists in forums on the internet to simplify the adoption of this pedagogical approach. The

paper outlines the experience of four universities with support from three companies to exploit

this technology in ECE curricula. Assessment of hands-on pedagogy shows that the approach

has very positive impact on the depth of understanding of complex concepts. Effects are

particularly profound in the early years of a university program and for underrepresented and

minority students or who have had a fractured educational experience. Just as profound, is the

impact “hands-on learning” has on college engineering program retention rates and students’

future employment opportunities. Experimenting and solving problems in a hands-on

environment can provide a solid grounding in engineering principles. More importantly, hands-

on learning with one of the various student learning tools is just plain fun for faculty as well as

students. The paper also considers the potential for this technology to seed a disruptive chain of

developments in higher education.

Introduction

Innovation is the lifeblood of productivity and competitiveness. Nowhere has the impact been

more clearly demonstrated than in the application of digital technology over the past four

decades. Following the relentless rhythm of Moore’s Law, it has delivered a new technology

node every two years. New processors, memory and communications circuits routinely offer

dramatic reductions in cost per function. Computer-linked instrumentation is a latecomer to that

trend. However, a small commercially available module now offers performance that is

comparable with the benchmark student workstation (signal generator, oscilloscope and dual

voltage power supply) in a $100 package. This means that students can buy their own lab and

experimental teaching is unshackled from the constraints and schedules of on-campus facilities.

The development path and teaching applications that led to the ‘personal lab’ are outlined in the

next section. With a low-cost instrument, that experience can now be widely deployed and the

paper reports on first results from four universities. The changes are certainly innovative but will

they be disruptive? Innovation adds to productivity and the range of applications but it only

Page 23.576.2

becomes disruptive when new organizations are created to lead and exploit the new technology

and they displace the old regime. The characteristic features of disruptive change have been

analyzed at length. Christensen’s book1 provides a foundational review and the scope is well-

covered in a recent National Academies workshop2. Both sources emphasize that all disruptive

technology is innovative but only a small proportion of innovative technology becomes

disruptive. There are many claimants and almost every week there is an announcement of a new

development, especially in electronics, that is promised to radically change the applications

world. The range and frequency of these claims create a strong background noise level that

obscures the few trends that will eventually become established. This is well-characterized by

the ‘hype-curve’3. Only a small proportion of innovations achieve eventual success and of these,

a few will become disruptive and fundamentally change the ways we operate.

The path to Discovery

Computer-controlled test systems have been available since the late 70s but they have been

expensive relative to the typical budget for a student lab workstation. An early approach was to

use the instrument controller as a server which can support multiple remote users4. This

approach remains a very cost-effective way of giving many students access to high-quality

automated instrumentation but it is constrained by having a fixed set-up and therefore no hands-

on activity beyond manipulating data. It is analogous to the generation of multi-user mainframe

computers. It has its place but instruments attached to personal computers have demonstrated

more opportunities for teaching applications.

The Mobile Studio at RPI grew out of an effort to make the techniques of Studio Pedagogy more

effective and much more affordable5. Studio instruction was originally developed for 1st and 2nd

year science and math courses6 and then progressed to the core ECE courses. It was found to be

a very good way to deliver engineering education and attracted a steady stream of visitors all of

whom went away hoping they could implement something similar. However, very few were

successful because the costs were so high - about $10 k per seat. An inexpensive studio for

teaching electronics was then developed using a small custom circuit board to deliver the

functionality needed. With the help of industry and NSF funding and the support of a growing

but small number of true believers, the RED2 board became generally available in 20087. It had

all the necessary functionality and the robust design to survive regular usage by undergrads. The

cost of each was about the same as a textbook or about $150.

The ‘Lab-in-a-box’ initiative at Virginia Tech started in 2003 and represents a parallel path to

design hands-on activities for circuits courses8. Students were required to purchase the portable

electronics used in the sophomore and junior-level circuits laboratory courses to instill a sense of

ownership of the technology. Initially, the oscilloscope functions were derived from a sound

card9. The frequency range (roughly 50-5000 Hz) and maximum voltage (1 V) were limited by

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the specifications of the sound card. It was replaced by the Velleman PCSGU 250, a two

channel oscilloscope with an arbitrary function generator to eliminate the continual issues with

incompatible sound cards as a result of Windows operating system upgrades. This drove the cost

under $200.

In parallel with these ground-breaking educational platforms, there have been a number of

commercial products aimed at the same market. They face three challenging requirements: low

cost, software that runs on any PC and bandwidth in the 10 MHz range with 12-bit resolution to

cover the typical analog functions. Products from Pico and National Instruments partially met

the specifications. The decisive change came with a new generation of analog-to-digital

converters. They have now been embedded into the Analog Discovery product that forms the

basis of this paper. For the first time, we have a commercially available personal lab tool that is

adequate in terms of resolution and bandwidth for most analog and circuit teaching scenarios in

electronics at less than the cost of a textbook.

Strategy for Analog Discovery applications in teaching

The exploratory work described in the previous section demonstrated that a personal lab

instrument could functionally replace the traditional fixed lab workstation and also establish

entirely new modes of educational delivery10. Systematic evaluation of the impact on learning

and the learner indicated that there were many opportunities to extend the student experience in

design/synthesis, experimental homework and curiosity-driven learning11. The availability of the

new Analog Discovery hardware is timely because it opens up opportunities for the whole

academic community to build on the exploratory work described above.

Over the last 20 years, all Engineering programs have steadily strengthened their project and

capstone courses to develop team-working and cross-disciplinary problem solving skills. The

outcomes can be seen in many ASEE presentations and in the emphasis placed on these

outcomes in the ABET accreditation process. Within the context of continuous improvement,

the emphasis now shifts to the foundational experimental skills to define, design and execute

practical work to a professional level. The availability of new tools coupled to a student-centric

approach with demonstrated advantages in learning outcomes11 offers an opportunity for new

teaching applications across the whole curriculum.

The strategy was to establish a loosely-coordinated evaluation in several different programs and

then report the findings through a paper to ASEE. The prototype Analog Discovery instrument

was made available to the four academic groups in early 2012. The following sections show

how the evaluation was done in each of the four universities. The extended specifications for the

instrument are given in the Appendix12. Software is provided with the instrument and students

can also buy a very comprehensive components kit with tutorials for its use.

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Analog Discovery applications at

Experienced engineers often recall their early years of tinkering with electronics and how excited

they were to explore the electronic circuit world. Hands

way to motivate early program engineering students to study core subject

This analytical foundation is essential

circuit design engineers. With tinkering and observation comes design instinct and applied

knowledge that’s hard to get any other wa

into the curriculum (with other college initiatives) retention of first year electrical engineering

students between 2001 and 2010 has risen from below 70% to over 83%.

Now with the introduction of a cost effective,

changing our thinking on how to effectively deliver engineering lab content and expand the

domain for student participation in the hands

module along with a lap top computer and associated instrument interface software constitute a

full blown test and measurement laboratory or from a student perspective a “back

Here is an example of the versatility and performance capability of th

applied to typical university lab exercises.

Second year students in electrical engineering explore the terminal characteristics of

semiconductor devices. Instead of using a $50,000 semiconductor parameter analyzer where

student access is limited, we use the $99 Analog Discovery module

student. The module is configured as synchronous repetitive step

and the two channel oscilloscope is placed in X

Having differential inputs for the oscilloscope channels makes X

foolproof. The classic NMOSFET output characteristics (ID vs VDS) with VGS stepped in 0.5

V increments are shown in Figure

VSB stepped in -1 V increments are shown in Figure

Analog Discovery applications at Rochester Institute of Technology

engineers often recall their early years of tinkering with electronics and how excited

they were to explore the electronic circuit world. Hands-on experience remains the single best

way to motivate early program engineering students to study core subjects in math and science.

essential for those who wish to become practicing, creative, analog

With tinkering and observation comes design instinct and applied

knowledge that’s hard to get any other way. In the ten years since introducing “tinkering labs”

into the curriculum (with other college initiatives) retention of first year electrical engineering

students between 2001 and 2010 has risen from below 70% to over 83%.

a cost effective, portable instrument cluster, we are dramatically

changing our thinking on how to effectively deliver engineering lab content and expand the

domain for student participation in the hands-on learning process. The Analog Discover

with a lap top computer and associated instrument interface software constitute a

measurement laboratory or from a student perspective a “back

example of the versatility and performance capability of this small lab module when

university lab exercises.

Second year students in electrical engineering explore the terminal characteristics of

nstead of using a $50,000 semiconductor parameter analyzer where

s is limited, we use the $99 Analog Discovery module that is owned by each

student. The module is configured as synchronous repetitive step-and-sweep signal generators

and the two channel oscilloscope is placed in X-Y mode to display current versus voltage

Having differential inputs for the oscilloscope channels makes X-Y displays simple and

The classic NMOSFET output characteristics (ID vs VDS) with VGS stepped in 0.5

V increments are shown in Figure 1. The NMOSFET transfer characteristics (ID vs VGS) with

1 V increments are shown in Figure 2.

engineers often recall their early years of tinkering with electronics and how excited

on experience remains the single best

s in math and science.

for those who wish to become practicing, creative, analog

With tinkering and observation comes design instinct and applied

y. In the ten years since introducing “tinkering labs”

into the curriculum (with other college initiatives) retention of first year electrical engineering

we are dramatically

changing our thinking on how to effectively deliver engineering lab content and expand the

Analog Discovery

with a lap top computer and associated instrument interface software constitute a

measurement laboratory or from a student perspective a “back-pack lab”.

all lab module when

Second year students in electrical engineering explore the terminal characteristics of

nstead of using a $50,000 semiconductor parameter analyzer where

owned by each

sweep signal generators

Y mode to display current versus voltage.

Y displays simple and

The classic NMOSFET output characteristics (ID vs VDS) with VGS stepped in 0.5

. The NMOSFET transfer characteristics (ID vs VGS) with

Page 23.576.5

Once the Analog Discovery module settings are adjusted for a specific device test, the module

configuration can be stored for future use. By changing the appropriate signal generator

polarities these setups can be easily adapted for complementary PMOSFETs, bipolar junction

transistors or other semiconductor devices.

Recently, we have begun using the Analog Discovery module and parts kit to offer an online

electrical engineering course with laboratory content. Each laboratory exercise has been tailored

for the students to conduct lab work in their own workspace. As of this date, the course has

completed eight weeks of work and the portable test lab and lab exercises have proven to be as

effective as university-based laboratory work.

Discovery applications at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The strategy that now governs the Analog Discovery applications started when Mobile Studio

was first used in the same ECE course in which Studio Pedagogy was introduced – Electric

Circuits. This 2nd year course is the first serious introduction to analog circuits in the Electrical

Engineering and Computer and Systems Engineering curricula. The original implementation of

Mobile Studio addressed only the existing studio activities but without requiring the expensive

classroom used previously. This made possible larger enrollments because any room in which

the students had access to power for their laptops became a studio classroom. All of the

characteristics of Studio pedagogy were incorporated. Topic introduction with a short lecture,

demo or hands-on activity was followed by paper and pencil calculations, simulation and/or

experiments with breaks for discussions and additional lectures as needed. Lectures could be

any length from a few minutes to over an hour, with most around 20 minutes. Figure 3 shows the

experimental setup using the RED board to characterize the motion of a cantilever beam.

Figure 3 Application to cantilever beam oscillation.

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Note the decaying sinusoid on the laptop screen and the small toolbox which holds everything

needed to do the measurement, except for the beam.

With the introduction of the more capable and reliable RED2 board, Mobile Studio pedagogy

expanded to other four and two year institutions in the US and abroad and to additional courses.

In addition to making possible the use of hands-on activities at universities with very limited

operating budgets, such as those found in Sub-Saharan Africa, the most exciting changes were to

the pedagogical model itself. These were based on the key difference between mobile learning

platforms like Mobile Studio and the Analog Discovery – that they can be used by students

anywhere and anytime. Thus, students were given hardware homework because they carried

their lab in their backpacks. They worked through the assigned tasks and then demonstrated

their results when they were next in class. Flipped classrooms were also implemented, most

notably in Electronic Instrumentation, where students can watch video lectures and try ideas out

experimentally as they are learning the course material. There are many, many more ideas to be

explored that are now possible with this new approach to instruction.

Discovery applications at Virginia Tech

The Analog Discovery instrument has been used in two lab courses where students perform

circuit analysis either by hand or using MATLAB and simulations using Cadence OrCAD

PSpice. It dramatically expands the capability to the point where the maximum frequency of

operation is now limited by the parasitic capacitance of the breadboards used for circuit

construction. Operational parameters are measured and compared with the analysis and

simulation predictions. Unlike a typical lab course, the students do not go to a laboratory

classroom to do the assignment but have to do the work on their own schedule during the week

in whatever location they chose. To promote student independence and self-learning, a library of

online materials has been developed and is provided to the students through hotlinks embedded

in the report templates that are posted on Scholar, the local course management program. These

are brief lectures that highlight the theories that form the foundation of the experiments and

discuss deviations from the ideal, flash and video tutorials on simulation and measurement

techniques and links to component datasheets. Hands-on activities using the electronic platform

have also been incorporated into courses on electromagnetic fields, signals and systems and fiber

optics.

Three major initiatives have supported the lab activities:

� the refinement of an automated lab report grading program

� the development of an online laboratory course

� the integration of MATLAB more completely in our experiments.

The last effort was motivated by a need to provide additional activities that strengthen the

programming skills of undergraduate students and, more importantly, to provide guidance to

Page 23.576.7

students as they learn how certain factors contributed to the deviations from the ideal

performance of real circuits.

A MATLAB Data Acquisition Toolbox Support Package has been developed for Analog

Discovery Hardware13. Using this package, students are able to generate vectors in MATLAB

that can be easily exported to the Analog Discovery as the source code for the arbitrary function

generator. Furthermore, data from the Analog Discovery oscilloscope can be read directly into

MATLAB. Students can then overlay the plots of the expected output signals, calculated using

nominal value components with ideal characteristics, with the measured outputs from the actual

circuits that they have constructed. With minimal effort, the students can tailor their original

calculations, such as change component values from the nominal to the measured values, to

determine the contribution of component tolerance on the circuit performance. When prompted

to perform a more in-depth evaluation of their design, students consider the effect of parasitics,

such as resistance and capacitance in an inductor and other non-ideal models for the components

used in the circuit. Once students have gained an appreciation of these effects, they can

understand how to read a datasheet for example to select an appropriate operational amplifier

based upon the input and output resistances and other device parameters rather than selecting the

first one that they see in their parts kit. It is this merger of theory and practice that stimulates

students to develop a deeper understanding of circuit design and enables them to create more

innovative and robust designs.

The students design two bandpass filters – one designed to have a center frequency at the

fundamental frequency of the square wave and a bandwidth of 175 Hz and the second bandpass

filter with a center frequency at the third harmonic and a bandwidth of 825 Hz. Both filters are

first order active filters with a gain of -1. The students are not asked to predict the shape of the

output signal from either of the filters in the required prelab analysis, though they are required to

simulate the frequency response of each filter in PSpice to demonstrate that the correctness of

their designs. Once the students have verified their filter designs, they then construct the filters.

With the fast Fourier transform option in the Waveforms software program, students measure the

amplitudes of each frequency component in the signal that they have generated using MATLAB

and compare the results with the amplitudes and frequencies of the components that are

measured from the ideal square wave, which is one of the standard functions available in the

library of signals on the Analog Discovery. Then, the students measure the output of the first

bandpass filter using the signal that they created in MATLAB. The signal in the time domain,

shown in the upper plot in figure 4, looks as one might expect – a reasonably good sine wave

with a frequency equal to the fundamental frequency. In the frequency domain, there are still

peaks associated with the higher order harmonics, but the amplitudes of these components are

quite small and cannot be observed in the lower plot in figure 4.

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Figure. 4 Arbitrary function generator (blue) and bandpass filter output with a fo = 1 kHz and

BW = 175 Hz in the time domain (upper plot) and frequency domain (lower plot).

Analog Discovery applications at Arizona State University

A prototype of the Analog Discovery and its larger Explorer sibling had been used in several

student projects so there was benchmark data for applications, acceptance and performance

relative to other lab instruments. The course selected for the first full-class application of the

Analog Discovery in Fall 2012 concerned the engineering processes involved in the introduction

of new electronic products. The availability of the new instrument provided a timely opportunity

to use it as the featured product. Forty students were enrolled in this junior-level class.

Only about a third of the class was following a traditional track with a full time program directly

after high school. Many of the remainder had a ‘fractured educational background’ in that their

academic career to this point had been spread over many years in several institutions and

programs. The practical work consisted of six extended experiments with two or three weeks

allocated for each and no scheduled lab location or time.

Students were recommended to buy their own Analog Discovery in place of a textbook and do

the experimental work on their own and off-campus. However, there were no restrictions on

collaboration and two workstations were available for open access in a lab for anyone who did

not have their personal instrument. At the 21-day point, 27% of the class did not own the

instrument but within another month, the flexibility and outcomes being demonstrated by their

peers led them all to buy. By the end, only 8 % said they would consider selling it.

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One of the first issues to emerge was that almost no-one in the class used any standardized

process to plan, set up, execute and report experiments. Their previous experiences in traditional

lab classes had provided this process but it had not been emphasized to the point where it was a

routine sequence of actions. When students work on their own, a more systematic approach is

needed so they were given a sequence adapted from experimental design within capstone

projects. It has seven stages: purpose, scope, design, approvals, execution, analysis and report

so students became accountable for every facet of each experiment. Problems encountered in

the course of experiments were reviewed in weekly class tutorial sessions.

All the lab work was concerned with behavior of common components and analog signal

processing. In the first three experiments, the scope and purpose were pre-defined. They

included: response of RC circuits to sine and square wave inputs, basic op amp gain blocks,

passive and simple active filters. They demonstrated data acquisition and analysis using the

built-in Bode and Fourier-transform capabilities. The second group of three experiments was

determined by each student to suit their own perceived interests or learning needs. Inevitably,

the range of experiments chosen was large; from a repeat of one of the first three to convertors,

multiplexing or device characterization.

The main outcome was that they overwhelmingly appreciated the new experience. The

responses (based on 40 responses to yes/no questions) can be summarized as:

% Yes

Is the Discovery more effective than a conventional lab 81

Is the Discovery good value relative to buying a class textbook 76

Do you now consider yourself a reasonably proficient user 100

Was the documentation supplied via Blackboard adequate 88

Have you used information from the Digilent web site 81

Would a You-tube video and FAQ help 96

Do you need more 1:1 personal instruction 42

Did you collaborate with others on any of the labs 85

Did you learn more when you collaborated 92

Did this lab work take more time than labs for other courses 92

Was it a more effective use of your time for learning 81

Should other students in the program buy the instrument 96

These responses certainly provide a positive class comment on the success of the Analog

Discovery as a home-lab enabler. Some feedback also demonstrated other outcomes. The first

was that even the simple introductory experiments that should have been fully understood by

everyone relied on foundational understanding that was far from secure. The students were the

first to admit this and over half chose to do second-phase experiments that let them to further

explore and reinforce the basics rather than try new circuit functions. More than half also said

Page 23.576.10

they had used the Analog Discovery to help their understanding of concepts in other classes.

The average time spent on lab work was 5 – 6 hours per week. This figure was requested on

three different occasions during the semester with the same average time for each poll.

Conclusions from initial Analog Discovery applications

It is rare to experience an abrupt change in the way courses can be organized and delivered. In

this case, however, the Analog Discovery provided such an event in the collaborating

institutions. It has the cost advantages of a consumer product; it is an instant substitute for the

majority of instruments currently used in electronics teaching labs; students can be using it

effectively within a few hours of receipt and there are no procurement constraints.

The collaborative activities reported in the four cases above have demonstrated a number of

important features:

� The teaching initiatives pioneered through Mobile Studio and Lab-in-a-box can be

substantially extended.

� Both students and instructors previously unacquainted with the technology or pedagogy

have been consistently successful in taking or offering courses previously organized

around traditional lab facilities.

� The instrument can be applied to about 80 % of the teaching lab work in a typical

electronics undergraduate program. The only applications for which it is unsuited are

those requiring high precision or high frequencies (above 10 MHz).

� Students spent more time on their lab work and claim they acquired more practical

competency than they did in conventional scheduled lab sessions with fixed workstations.

� The development of these personal experimental skills is essential for their

complementary work in team-based projects.

The outcomes reported in this paper are mostly qualitative. That is to be expected from the

initial experiences with a new product. However, we are clearly at the start of a large-scale

educational experiment and longer-term quantitative evaluations are being set up to determine:

� The depth of understanding behind the increased applications fluency.

� The level of student accountability in terms of deliverables and data ethics that goes with

ownership of a personal lab.

� Templates for a more rigorous process for student-driven experimental planning and

results analysis.

� How much student-student cooperation is established given that it is an additional burden

that they must organize since there are no longer scheduled lab classes where cooperation

is imposed through shared use of lab equipment.

� Whether the benefits accrue equally to students who have followed a full-time academic

program and those whose educational progress has been interrupted by jobs, family or

transfers.

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� The efficiency with which experimental competency can be applied later in unscripted

applications such as capstone projects.

� The extent to which faculty and student-generated experiments can be openly distributed

to act as a platform on which to build a customized practical learning experience.

� Can the appeal of Mobile Studio and Lab-in-a-box to students underrepresented in STEM

education be scaled up?

� Does it increase the level of technical curiosity?

Wider implications

The utility for individual students is clear but the greater question is whether the impact on

higher education programs will be incremental or disruptive. On its own, the Analog Discovery

instrument certainly provides an incremental change and its performance/cost value make it a

welcome addition to the teaching inventory. However, it can also be a key component in a trend

that could become disruptive for the same reasons that electronics has been disruptive in every

other business sector. It is a more powerful product that is easier to use and with a substantially

lower cost than the previous generation.

In this case, consider the impact on the major stakeholders:

� Students see the most direct impact in that they become more accountable for their lab

work. This attitude promotes engaged learning and a professional view of how

experimental work has to be planned, executed and reported.

� These are central concepts in many of the ABET outcomes. New opportunities for

continuous improvement are welcomed by the accreditation bodies.

� Almost every student engaged in a practical project will make use of electronic

instrumentation. The most likely area of trouble concerns analog signal processing

between sensors and computers and this is a path to ‘just enough’ electronics training for

non-specialists.

� Faculty who seek to integrate concepts with practical applications now have many more

options both in scope and delivery mode.

� Institutions have an immediate advantage in not having to support and schedule

electronics labs.

� Wide-scale collaboration through massive open on-line courses (MOOCs) can now be

extended to include experimental work14.

� The cost barriers to entry have been reduced for high schools and hobbyists. Awareness

in these domains is a powerful factor in attracting more students to university programs.

� Industry commitment is shown through direct product development by Analog Devices,

Digilent (now part of National Instruments) and MathWorks. Page 23.576.12

� Application demonstrations have been featured in many industry short courses. They

have not been reported here but the universal comment has been, “Where was that when I

was a student?”

In conclusion, the availability of inexpensive USB-powered electronic instrumentation offers a

path to dramatically transform engineering education. Students are engaged earlier and more

often with hands-on learning tools creating a more interesting, practical course of study

beginning in the freshman year. This increased emphasis on hands-on learning, discovery and

problem-solving skills seamlessly translates into the basic requirements industry requires in

engineers. The availability of electronic instrumentation that is cheaper than a textbook

promotes inquiry-based learning, on-line education and development of world-wide user

communities in academia and industry and of high-tech hobbyists. In one stroke, the availability

of USB-powered electronics has redefined the concept of student-centric hands-on learning.

Students can now own their personal laboratory stations; they are no longer bound by the

constraints of fixed space, equipment, and schedules in their institution to conduct experiments.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the long-term support and encouragement received from

their departments and colleagues. Industry support was received from Analog Devices, Digilent,

MathWorks and Hewlett-Packard. NSF funding under DUE-0717832, 1226114, 1226087,

1226065 and 1226011, EEC-0812056 and undergraduate education awards 0343160, 0817102

and 1226011 also enabled the work described in this paper.

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4. Azad, A., Auer, A., Harward, J. (eds).”Internet Accessible Remote Laboratories: Scalable ELearning Tools for Engineering and Science Disciplines”. IGI Global Publisher, USA. November 2011. ISBN13: 9781613501863

5. E.W. Maby, A.B. Carlson, K.A. Connor, W. C. Jennings, P.M. Schoch, “A Studio Format for Innovative

Pedagogy in Circuits and Electronics,” Proc. of 1997 Frontiers in Education Conference, 12/1997.

6. J. M. Wilson, “The CUPLE Physics Studio,” The Physics Teacher, Vol. 32, p518, 1994.

7. D Millard, M Chouikha & F Berry, “Improving student intuition via Rensselaer’s new mobile studio pedagogy” ASEE Annual Conference, 2007, AC 2007-1222.

8. R W Hendricks, K M Lai & J B Web, “Lab-in-a-box: Experiments in electronic circuits that support

introductory courses for electrical and computer engineers”, Proc ASEE Annual Conference, 2005.

9. Details are at: www.zeitnitz.de/Christian/scope_en

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10. K A Connor et al. “Mobile Studio pedagogy, parts 1 and 2”, Proc ASEE Annual Conference, 2012.

11. D L Newman, G Clure, M M Deyoe & K A Connor, “Using Technology in a Studio Approach to Learning:

Results of a Five Year Study of an Innovative Mobile Teaching Tool”, in Jared Keengwe, Ed., Pedagogical

Applications and Social Effects of Mobile Technology Integration, IGI Global, 2013.

12. Details of the Analog Discovery product and its supporting material are at:

http://digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,842,1018&Prod=ANALOG-DISCOVERY

13. Details of the MathWorks on the Discovery platform can be found at:

http://www.mathworks.com/academia/digilent-analog-discovery/

14. Harden N, “The end of the university as we know it”, The American Interest, Jan/Feb 2013.

Appendix . Analog Discovery specifications.

The Digilent Analog Discovery™ design kit, developed in conjunction with Analog Devices

Inc., is the first in a new line of all-in-one analog design kits that will enable engineering

students to quickly and easily experiment with advanced technologies and build and test real-

world, functional analog design circuits anytime, anywhere - right on their PCs. For the price of

a textbook, students can purchase a low-cost analog hardware development platform and

components, with access to downloadable teaching materials, reference designs and lab projects

to design and implement analog circuits as a supplement to their core engineering curriculum.

The overall package dimensions are 83 x 65 x 18 mm. Images of the top and bottom of the

internal board are shown in figure 5.

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Figure 5. Component layout on Discovery board

The unit is driven entirely through the USB link so power is limited and has to be distributed

between the instrument operating needs, load on the signal lines and the fixed ± 5 V dc output

power supply. The I/O connector is notched to avoid the risk of an inverted coupling. The mass

of unscreened I/O wires can be awkward to handle but they are a working compromise between

simplicity, frequency range, noise limits and cost. However, other connectors common in

laboratory settings such as BNC coax and scope probes can be easily added.

It uses the well-established Digilent Waveforms software to display power supply, analog and

digital signal sources as well as a two-channel fully differential oscilloscope. The maximum

sampling rate is 100 M sample/s but oversampling is always assured with 16 k samples in a

channel record. This illustrates an interesting design compromise for the educational market. It

means a lower nominal bandwidth but since the full frame of the oscilloscope image has 16 k

data points, there is no risk of undersampling. For students who may be seeing time-frequency

transpositions or Bode plots for the first time, this large sample size is a good precaution. It also

provides a rapid introduction to the world of ‘big data’ when students save the data file and find

they have to manage 16,000 rows in the Excel spreadsheet.

Analog Inputs

• AD9648 dual, 14-bit, 105 MSPS, 1.8 V dual analog-to-digital converter • 2-channel differential (1 MΩ, 24 pF), ±20 V max • 250 µV to 5 V/division with variable gain settings • 100 MSPS, 5 MHz bandwidth, up to 16k points/channel record length

Analog Outputs

• AD9717 dual, 14-bit, 125 MSPS, low power digital-to-analog converter • 2-channel, single-ended, arbitrary waves up to ±4 V • 100 MSPS, 5 MHz bandwidth, up to 16k samples/channel • Standard and user-defined waveforms • Sweeps, envelopes, AM and FM modulation

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Power Supplies • 2 fixed +5 V (+50 mA) and –5 V (+50 mA)

Digital I/O

• 16 signals shared between logic analyzer, pattern generator and I/O devices • 100 MSPS, buffer size is 4k transitions per pin • Cross-triggering with scope channels

Software

• Waveforms™ software: full-featured GUI for all instruments • TINA circuit simulation software • Windows® XP® or newer

Analog parts kit

• 16 ICs • 12 sensors • 105 resistors and potentiometers • 27 capacitors and inductors • 28 transistors and diodes • 70 jumper wires and solderless board

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