FIE ‘ Stimulating Introductory Engineering Courses with Java Ronald Danielson Sally Wood Santa Clara University Support provided by Hewlett-Packard and 3Com, and the Santa Clara University Technology Steering Committee

FIE ‘ Motivations Engineering topics are: –complex –layered –interdependent Students must –develop context and intuition –be actively engaged in learning

FIE ‘ Motivations New technology –cost of memory and mips –interconnection density Potential impact on education –access to multiple methods of presentation effective communication to much broader audience –dynamic presentation of processes and interactions better communication of complex relationships –asynchronous personal access

FIE ‘ WWW as Courseware Delivery Mechanism Student-controlled navigation Well-defined interface Multiple media –continuous and dynamic Platform independence Wide access

FIE ‘ Application Areas Introductory programming Basic concepts in EE –power, energy, voltage & current, sinusoidal signals, time constants, feedback, transducers Understanding digital technologies –semiconductor devices and processing, logic design, computer architecture, software development and systems, computer networks

FIE ‘ Approach Courseware modules Use for enrichment Provide options for student experience –short text segments –links to more in-depth explanations –varied interaction and control

FIE ‘ Lecture

FIE ‘ Demonstration

FIE ‘ Examples

FIE ‘ Free Interaction

FIE ‘ Accomplishments Java tutorial Simple logic circuit animations Network concept animations Basic classes for further development

FIE ‘ Lessons Learned Java is growing and changing –incompatibilities Thread programming is hard –and performs inconsistently Video is fun but hard to use effectively Tutorials for learning are very different from CAD tools

FIE ‘ Lessons Learned Exploit layering and links –fine-grained modularity Concentrate on class design for reusability –design first

FIE ‘ Logic Animation

FIE ‘ Truth Table Class

FIE ‘ Truth Table Class

FIE ‘ Future Work Restructure Java tutorial –add evaluation questions Redo logic design animations –based on uniform underlying class structure Design uniform class structures for –transistor circuits –CPU architectures