Junior-level design experiment in a 10 week analog design course

This paper presents a newly designed laboratory project for the Oregon State University (OSU) Electronics II course for junior-level electrical and computer engineering (ECE) students. The previous course was taught using common-place single session laboratory experiments and was not well received by students. An open-ended multi-solution laboratory project designed to boost students´ abilities on problem solving and innovation was chosen. The new laboratory project was developed to integrate design, communication, and system thinking into a single course. Integration of these soft-skills into the laboratory gives opportunities to use the skills in a technical context. This initial single term course better prepares students for later coursework. To assess the changes to this new laboratory, student pre and post surveys were used along side of laboratory observations. Topics of interest were student self-efficacy, student expectations of the laboratory, and student reflections on the course-laboratory connection. Results from the initial student self-efficacy survey results show an increase in student teamwork while the students´ expectations of the course showed provable trends. Student reflections show the most variability and give insights into what aspects of the course worked the best.