First Year DSP Education in the Context of ECE Curriculum Reform

Over time DSP education has tracked the evolution and growth of its theoretical foundations, hardware and implementation resources, and engineering education context. First year DSP courses have often had dual objectives of both motivating students to consider EE through an interesting first course and laboratory experience and also satisfying some part of the major curriculum requirements. Recent trends in engineering education and curriculum reform may offer opportunities to include DSP content in the early curriculum in a more distributed manner rather than as a single course. Reformed EE programs may focus on multidisciplinary and integrated freshman experiences in terms of design projects or specific context themes. This paper explores how DSP course content might be integrated into first year experiences in this context and explores implications with respect to concept continuity and assessment.