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Curriculum Committee Minutes 2021 February 8

Curriculum Committee Minutes 2021 February 8

Owned by Mark Hasegawa-Johnson
Last updated: Feb 08, 2021

Attending

Anu Aggarwal, Arijit Banerjee, Yuliy Baryshnikov, Ujjal Bhowmik, Deming Chen, Zuofu Cheng, Pete Dragic, Viktor Gruev, Bruce Hajek, Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, Nam Sung Kim, Erhan Kudeki, Rakesh Kumar, Steve Lumetta, Andrew Miller, Shaloo Rakheja, Chris Schmitz, Jonathan Schuh, Alexander Schwing, Victoria Shao

Time and Place

Monday, February 8, 2:00pm, https://illinois.zoom.us/j/96972752638?pwd=Z3hqdUxYamNJazNYRkR0V1JmM0padz09

New Business

The ECE 385  steering committee gave a presentation about changes to ECE 385.  Key issue: Many students complain that it's too  hard. 

  1. Students who already have good debugging skills spend ~10 hours/week; students with little prior design/debugging experience spend 2-3X that. 
  2. Many students postpone 385 until their last semester, opening up a gulf of seven semesters between the end of 120 and the beginning of 385.
  3. Another issue about not being in lab during CoVID is that students don't have other students who have had the same problem (and solved it) sitting around nearby.
  4. Comment from the committee on the difference between fact and perception: among our CE + EE graduates, grades in 385 are the same on average, and overall are better than similar-level courses (like 313...by about 0.5 grade points).  It isn't the material is tough as much as the workload is heavy. Here is the HKN advice-for-students report on ECE 385: ECE 385 - Digital Systems Laboratory

Dr. Cheng has responded by (1) adding an MP that reminds students of what they learned in 120, (2) removing one MP, and merging two others, to reduce total number of MPs by one.  Two further suggestions came from the committee: (3) maybe you should ask them how long each lab took (quantized), sanitize the results a bit, and then publish them for the students to see? (4) have you / would you consider having project teams of 3-4 people instead of 2?  There are management issues to consider when dealing with larger groups, but other courses are addressing and solving some of those issues, e.g., ECE110 is now teaching students to think about how teams function and they produce a team "charter" in week#2 where they speak openly about issues that can occur during a project. They document plans on how to address issues as soon as they start to appear. It seems this is having some level of success.


The Curriculum Committee then discussed two possible future steps.

(1) ECE 385 is obviously useful for CE students, but should it be required for EE students? Two alternatives were proposed.

(a) Instead of 385, should EE students be permitted to take a course on microcontrollers?  Arguments in favor: most advanced courses in EE, if they use hardware, use microcontrollers, not FPGA.  Much EE research uses microcontrollers.  Arguments against: ECE 385 already includes a section on embedded software.  It is many students' first exposure to microcontrollers.  ECE 445 does not permit software-only designs, so a course on microcontrollers  would give students the wrong idea about 445.

(b) Instead of 385, should EE students be permitted to take a course on analog design, e.g., ECE 483?  Arguments against: All EE research requires the use of digital circuits to acquire data.

(2) In order to more strongly encourage students to take 385 in the third year, should 385 be a pre-requisite for ECE 411 and ECE 445?

(a) For ECE 411: Arguments in favor: the course director and current instructor have both proposed that 411 would be easier to teach if 385 were  a pre-requisite.  Students without  385 struggle.  Arguments against: the tools used in  411 are not always the same as those used in 385.

(b) For ECE 445: Arguments in favor: Students with prior exposure to design, and to signals, do better in 445.  Arguments against: only a small fraction of 445 projects use FPGA, so the skills that transfer from 385 to 445 would be more abstract; concrete skills do not transfer as easily.  Most 445 projects require PCB design, which is learned by most students, for the first time, in 445.

STATUS: 411 and 445 course directors will discuss among themselves (and with their areas) the possibility of preparing course amendment proposals, to make 385 a pre-requisite.  Such proposals, if submitted, will be considered by the Curriculum Committee at its meeting of 2021 February 22.