Circuits and systems engineering education through interdisciplinary team-based design projects

An essential part of the bachelor program in Electrical Engineering at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven since many years is a number of design projects that teach the basics of electronics design engineering to our students. The major project consists of an academic-year-long design task that is carried out by a group of about 20 students. These students are trained to operate as a multidisciplinary team based of sub- teams that handle the different design problems in a multidisciplinary way. Teaching assistants are added to the team to serve either as expert designer or as project leader of a team. In this way the students learn a lot about the circuits, systems and software they conceive but they also develop their teamwork, leadership and presentation skills. In this paper we will give an overview of the technical content of this project and describe the way how it is organised. Taking this project as an example, the rationale behind this kind of interdisciplinary design projects is depicted.