Working with industry to create a test and product engineering course

Creating a mixed-signal test and product engineering course

“…The labs are structured to provide hands-on experiences to reinforce the concepts described in lecture, which allows the students to learn by multiple modalities. Additionally, the hands-on experiences reach a wider variety of students with different learning styles [5]. Finally, in addition to the typical cognitive objectives for lab (experiences with instrumentation, designing experiments, analyzing data, and designing tests), the labs were designed to provide experiences with key affective components (learning from failure and thereby using creativity in designing solutions to overcome measurement and component variability) [6].…”

“…In order to address this industry need, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT) has developed a test engineering course that focuses on mixed-signal circuits. The authors have leveraged their experience in developing a successful analog test and product engineering course [5] to produce this test and product engineering course focused on mixed-signal circuits. While the accuracy-time tradeoffs are similar for analog and mixed-signal circuits, the testing procedures for mixed-signal circuits are dramatically different.…”

Introduction of Semiconductor Test Engineering into the BSEE Curriculum

“…The results of hands-on laboratories and introduction of real-world examples through the test engineering classes has shown to result in a deeper understanding and longer retention of the material. 6 Hence, we expect to see a correlation between improved scores on exams related to the material covered in the test labs. Changes in attitude and motivation will be monitored through Page 22.965.6…”

“…Of the few institutions integrating test engineering into the university curriculum, most implement it as one or two courses at the senior level. 6,7 A key challenge facing educational institutions is providing students with hands-on experience using an industrial-level semiconductor tester due to the prohibitive costs of purchasing such equipment. A couple of alternatives include the use of virtual instruments and shared access to a tester kept at a central location.…”

“…While Hudson and Copeland note that the elective class in semiconductor test really helped the students pull together the theory from all their course work, this integrative approach will provide this benefit to the students as they progress through the program rather than waiting for their senior year. 6 Third, from a pragmatic perspective, the gradual introduction of the tester labs into the curriculum will allow the faculty to get up to speed on using the tester, introducing material as the lab projects are developed. The proposed learning objectives for each test laboratory are summarized in Table 2.…”