Teaching an Interdisciplinary Engineering Course to Help Students to Better Select Their Majors

Abstract

This article presents a method to design an Internet-based interdisciplinary course, or part of a course, for early undergraduate engineering students. The objective is to emphasize on different aspects of a subject to give the students enough knowledge and experience to help them to choose their area of interest in engineering, and to motivate them to carry on using the Internet for other and similar studies. This method tries to combine the class instructions with the Internet tools, and to keep a balance between the two. That is, while supported by the instructional format, the Internet provides wealth of simulated experiments and design examples that are typically beyond the classroom capabilities. Study of digital clocks with all its long history and development pattern is selected as a case study for an introductory engineering course, UEET101, offered at Northern Illinois University. Practicality, simplicity and interdisciplinary (electrical, mechanical, and industrial) nature of the subject help students to get exposed to and experiment with a product of this nature before they make their career decision