Minutes of the 2010-11 ECE Curriculum Committee (CC)
November 9, 2010
Present: Tangul Basar, Bishop, Hu, Jones, Kudeki, Levinson, Mitra, Vaidya
Minutes of the CC meeting on November 2 were approved.
The discussions today focused on ECE 210 and ECE 110, the discussion on ECE 210 primarily addressing the potential approaches to utilize Matlab in that course. The discussion on ECE 110 addressed two issues: (i) changes to the coverage of some of the topics already included in the course schedule, and (ii) addition of new topics to the course schedule. The final recommendations on these issues will be formulated only after the committee has a chance to obtain input from the ECE 110 Course Directors. Thus, the summary below only reflects the current consensus in the CC, which is subject to change following discussions with the Course Directors.
Summary of the present consensus on the above two issues is presented below. The lecture numbers below refer to lectures listed in the Fall 2010 ECE 110 Course Schedule.
- Seven lectures (lectures 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16 and 17) are presently devoted to the following topics: I-V characteristics, diodes, transistors, and CMOS digital circuits. The committee recommends that the number of lectures on these topics be reduced to 2 or 3. The two reasons for this recommendation are (a) to free up time to cover new topics, as listed below, and (b) to reduce the depth to which some of the topics are covered presently. Additionally, some members of the CC suggested removal of the coverage of Thevenin/Norton equivalent circuits (lectures 39 and 41). The committee also suggests exploring the possibility of reducing the time devoted to the topics of error detection and correction coding, data compression and cryptography/encryption (lectures 32, 33 and 35)
- The committee recommends adding lectures on Matlab, and problem-solving using Matlab. The intent is to allow the students to become familiar with using Matlab for solving simple numerical problems. Embedding problem-solving using Matlab within discussion of other topics covered in the course (possibly including the labs) is to be explored. The committee also recommends adding a lecture to introduce the students to the internet architecture.
The ECE 110 Course Directors will be invited to join for a CC meeting in the near future.