Teaching signal processing on the Information Superhighway

It is becoming increasingly more common today for companies to team together when undertaking large and detailed projects. This activity, which is vital in terms of competitiveness, will no doubt increase substantially with the advent of the “Information Superhighway”. From an pedagogical point of view, this modern reality requires that we as educators develop new skills in our graduates which are relevant for these activities. These skills include: (1) learning to identify technical expertise and interest within the larger distributed group, (2) segmenting tasks in a meaningful fashion, (3) integrating results across a high speed network, (4) verifying system level performance, and (5) compiling and writing a comprehensive final report. An ongoing NSF funded project based at George Mason University is described for teaching and developing the above mentioned skills in the context of junior and senior level courses in signal processing and system analysis. Methods of team learning based on current notions of distance learning are detailed. Extensions to this program which integrate in a constructive manner a number of Universities via “connected laboratories” and a common instruction base are discussed