Multimedia courseware for instruction of engineering experimentation

Multimedia courseware is being developed that will assist in the instruction of a senior-level engineering experimentation course at UC Berkeley. In this course, students conduct experiments that tackle open-ended problems requiring teamwork, experiment design, and the integration of theory with actual system behavior. The courseware provides students with a central resource that allows them to integrate the disparate information required to successfully complete their experiments. In addition, the multimedia courseware offers an improved pedagogical tool for helping students understand the engineering devices they will be working with in the lab, since it can provide video demonstrations of inherently motion-dependent concepts, such as system behavior of controlling the signal on an oscilloscope. The courseware is designed in modules to permit its modification and use at other institutions