1. FIE ‘98 - 1 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

2. FIE ‘98 - 2 Motivations Engineering topics are: –complex –layered –interdependent Students must –develop context and intuition –be actively engaged in learning

3. FIE ‘98 - 3 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

4. FIE ‘98 - 4 WWW as Courseware Delivery Mechanism Student-controlled navigation Well-defined interface Multiple media –continuous and dynamic Platform independence Wide access

5. FIE ‘98 - 5 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

6. FIE ‘98 - 6 Approach Courseware modules Use for enrichment Provide options for student experience –short text segments –links to more in-depth explanations –varied interaction and control

7. FIE ‘98 - 7 Lecture

8. FIE ‘98 - 8 Demonstration

9. FIE ‘98 - 9 Examples

10. FIE ‘98 - 10 Free Interaction

11. FIE ‘98 - 11 Accomplishments Java tutorial Simple logic circuit animations Network concept animations Basic classes for further development

12. FIE ‘98 - 12 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

13. FIE ‘98 - 13 Lessons Learned Exploit layering and links –fine-grained modularity Concentrate on class design for reusability –design first

14. FIE ‘98 - 14 Logic Animation

15. FIE ‘98 - 15 Truth Table Class

16. FIE ‘98 - 16 Truth Table Class

17. FIE ‘98 - 17 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