The introductory continuous-time signals and systems (CTSS) course is widely considered to be one of the most difficult courses in electrical and computer engineering (ECE) curricula. This interactive workshop explores the sources of difficulty and presents some approaches to help improve learning and understanding. It will begin with a discussion about learning difficulties that are identified by both the participants and the presenters. This discussion will be encouraged and focused through directed questions and presentation of historical data that was gathered at RoseHulman. The second part of the workshop will describe hands-on activities that are being done at Bucknell and Rose-Hulman to help address some of the currently perceived learning difficulties. Attendees will have an opportunity to attempt some of these activities, use the technology to develop their own activity, and review the activities with regard to the earlier discussion about learning difficulties. Each attendee is highly encouraged to bring a laptop and a limited number of participants will receive a USB memory stick with the software and sample lesson plans and materials that are currently available.
Signals and Systems is a core course in undergraduate electrical engineering curriculum. The concepts taught in this course become foundational knowledge for many advanced courses, which necessitates conceptual understanding of the topics in this course. Despite many attempts to make this course easy to understand for students, its conceptual understanding remains a challenge. The objective of this study is to identify students' understanding and retention of signals' representations, operations, and transformation in and between frequency and time domain by identifying the mistakes that undergraduate electrical engineering students continue to make even after repeatedly applying the concepts in advanced courses. For this study, three questions related to the basic concepts (drawing of a sinusoidal signal, and Fourier analysis) in signals and systems courses were given in the midterm exam of undergraduate electrical engineering students while they were taking signals and systems course. A year later, the same three questions were given to the same students in their digital signal processing midterm exam. All students were taught by the same instructors. The objective of taking the same exam of the same students twice with a gap of one year was to identify how the understanding and retention of students develop as they continue to encounter the same concepts repeatedly in different contexts. The results reveal that for two out of the three questions given, more than fifty percent of the students who solved the questions (partially or completely) correctly for the first time did not retain the understanding a year later. For the third question, the percentage of the students who retained the understanding was greater but still comparable with the ones who forgot the concept a year later. This study identifies some very basic and important Signals and Systems related concepts that are hard to understand and retain and can help to suggest pedagogical techniques to improve students' understanding.
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