Electrical Engineering And Computer Science Research Articles

Delivering computing module for the large part-time software development class from pre- to post-pandemic: An online learning experience

IntroductionCovid-19 pandemic brought dramatic changes to higher education settings, particularly for curriculum delivery, moving quickly to online learning. This paper discusses teaching experience covering practices of technology-enhanced learning for the MSc Computing Foundations module (20 CATS) for a large class studying part-time Software Engineering course at the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EEECS), Queen's University Belfast (QUB) during 2019–2022 academic years. We compare on-campus learning with the abrupt shift to online learning during the pandemic and with sustainable online learning a year later. The objective of this study is to answer how part-time software development students perceived their technology-enhanced learning experience from pre- to post-pandemic and to evaluate the impact of the shift to online learning for the part-time class MethodsThis study is based on data collected during 2019/2020, 2020/2021, 2021/2022 academic years. Methodology types employed in this study include online observation with statistics collected from the virtual learning environment (VLE) Canvas, quantitative analysis, individual student surveys on teaching techniques and module content ResultsThis study provided an effective online teaching method for Computer Foundation module, reviewing the impact of different curriculum items and online educational activities starting with content delivery – both synchronous and asynchronous – and moving on to VLE Canvas discussion forums, ungraded formative quizzes, in-term formative assessment in the form of mock exam and, finally, to online summative assessment delivered on VLE Canvas. We investigate positive and negative aspects of technology-enhanced learning from pre- to post-pandemic according to part-time adult students studying the MSc software development program and focus on how this effective learning environment contributes to education practice with a view what developments are worth retaining post-pandemic and what did not work well. Analysis of the data from individual student surveys on teaching techniques and module content for the Computing Foundations module allowed us to conclude that students perceived very positive their technology-enhanced learning experience after shifting to online learning. We also found out that сhanging the module delivery format (from face-to-face to online) did not affect the results of the students’ performance. Conclusion and implicationsAdaptation of the MSc Computing Foundation module to a new model of distance learning has proved to be successful, so we can conclude that this delivery format is appropriate for this target audience. This study explored the effectiveness of the pedagogical approach while also gaining valuable insights into the software development student experience of learning in the VLE. The findings from this study may contribute to developing effective teaching practices in software engineering education and adult learning, and improve the preparation of future software professionals in the IT industry.

Teaching color science to EECS students using interactive tutorials: Tools and lessons

Teaching color science to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) students is critical to preparing them for advanced topics such as graphics, visualization, imaging, Augmented/Virtual Reality. Color historically receive little attention in EECS curriculum; students find it difficult to grasp basic concepts. This is because today's pedagogical approaches are non-intuitive and lack rigor for teaching color science. We develop a set of interactive tutorials that teach color science to EECS students. Each tutorial is backed up by a mathematically rigorous narrative, but is presented in a form that invites students to participate in developing each concept on their own through visualization tools. This paper describes the tutorial series we developed and discusses the design decisions we made.

Relationships among Human Capital, Employability and Innovative Work Behavior by Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Field

Relationships among Human Capital, Employability and Innovative Work Behavior by Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Field

The impact of industry-oriented capstone courses on the employability of EECS students in technological universities

PurposeThis study used the industry-oriented capstone course to increase the employability of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) students in technological university.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, EECS students were selected and divided into groups, and the non-equivalent pretest–posttest quasi-experimental research method was adopted.FindingsIndustry-oriented capstone courses can improve students' employability, especially general ability, behaviour and attitude.Practical implicationsThe results of this study and many other studies show that capstone courses are helpful for the soft skills of students.Originality/valueThis study provides evidence that industry-oriented capstone courses can improve EECS students' employability.

福岡工大電気工学科TekBots<sup>®</sup> Hands-on工学プログラムによるマイクロコントローラ演習

Today's engineering students benefit from an educational program that integrates their knowledge so that they can better solve engineering problems and become natural innovators. The TekBots Platforms for Learning™ (TekBots® PFL) developed at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) of Oregon State University (OSU) in the United States have integrated a curriculum into a coherent whole while providing an environment for innovation. The TekBots, which are an automobile robot and a platform for learning created for electrical and computer engineering students, have been designed to assist teaching many practical engineering skills; innovation, design, knowledge integration, and the “real” problem solutions of “real” systems. With the hands-on TekBots, the students can experience the real meaning to many of the seemingly ambiguous topics presented in lecture. The department of Electrical Engineering at Fukuoka Institute of Technology (FIT) has introduced this TekBots PFL to improve its engineering curriculum and has developed the TekBots course program used at FIT in a small scale. The program has been built by four subjects; Freshmen Laboratory for Electrical Engineering, C Programming, Mechatronics I and II. A TekBots project “TekBots Global Vision System” for a graduation thesis has also been carried out. Since two subjects, the Freshmen Laboratory for Electrical Engineering and the C Programming, have already been reported in our previous paper, this paper treats the results of implementation on the Mechatronics I and II. The Mechatronics I and II courses are hands-on laboratories for learning PWM programming and interrupt processing respectively. A microcontroller unit (MCU) is used to control the TekBots instead of the analog board used in previous courses. Intermediate student surveys for the Mechatronics I were carried out during term. It is shown that the surveys are not only useful for communication between students and faculty but also beneficial to an improvement of the TekBots course.

The practice and theory of automated timetabling

This special volumecomprises revisedversions of a selectionof the papers thatwere presented at the 9th International Conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling (PATAT) in Belfast between 10th and 13th August 2010. The PATAT conferences are held biennially and this is the second time that the Annals of Operations Research has provided the venue for such a special collection of papers. The first PATAT special volume of this journal (Volume 194) contains papers associated with the 8th conference which was held in Montreal in 2008. PATAT acts as an international forum for all aspects of timetabling, including educational timetabling, personnel rostering, sports timetabling, and transport scheduling. The conference series is particularly concerned both with closing the gap between timetabling theory and practice and with supporting multidisciplinary interactions. The collection of papers in this special volume reflect these aims. The conference in Belfast brought together approximately 100 participants from around the world. There were five plenary presentations, 74 standard talks, and 16 practitioner presentations. All the delegates were invited to submit their revised papers to this special volume. The papers have been through a rigorous and thorough review process, and we are delighted to be able to present the community with such an interesting and diverse selection of articles that reflect the latest thinking in timetabling research. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who were responsible for the success of the conference. We would particularly like to thank Brian Fleming and all those within the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering andComputer Science at theQueen’s University of Belfast who worked so hard before and during the conference.

People Tracking in a Building Using Color Histogram Classifiers and Gaussian Weighted Individual Separation Approaches

This paper focuses on people tracking within a building with the installment of distributed overhead cameras. Our primary concern is to keep tracks of: number of people entrance to a particular area, and the whereabouts trajectory of a particular person within the monitored building. With image taken from ceiling mounted camera, pedestrian's physiologic contour is analyzed from four different viewing angles to form a person's identity signature. In doing so, techniques to locate a person's head, to predict his/her movement direction, to separate overlapped physiological blobs, and to differentiate different people by color histogram classifier have been proposed. Special attention has been paid for system configurability such that the proposed software architecture can be deployed to different floor plans. We have conducted a continuing surveillance monitoring on the third floor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) building in National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST), and the result shows moderate surveillance performance: 93% accuracy in entrance counting, and 76% accuracy in identification checking.

The Research of Prof. Willy Sansen: An Overview

The author discusses his relationship with Willy Sansen, whom he first met in 1969 when Sansen came to the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Department of the University of California, Berkeley, as a new Ph.D. candidate. The author supervised his Ph.D. research in the field of analog integrated circuit (IC) design for the next three years and got to know him well. Sansen arrived at Berkeley at an exciting time in the development of ICs. Silicon ICs were rapidly taking over commercial digital applications and were making major inroads in the analog circuits field as well. Sansen quickly realized that to make progress on both the theoretical analysis and computer simulation of these circuits, he would need to simultaneously tackle the problem of device characterization for IC processes. The state of the art in device modeling at the time was quite crude, particularly with regard to the parasitic elements associated with bipolar transistors, the dominant active devices then in widespread use. Sansen���s research on this topic was described in a 1972 paper that has been widely referenced over the years. He then applied this modeling expertise to the characterization of signal distortion in bipolar transistor VGAs. He combined closed-form analytical expressions with computer simulation that, for the first time, enabled circuit designers to quickly predict the nonlinear behavior of this important class of circuits. This work then led to the realization of methods of maximizing the dynamic range of VGAs. This research required inclusion of VGA device electrical noise processes in the analysis and explained for the first time a number of aspects of VGA noise performance that had been observed empirically but were not well understood. New circuit design ideas such as bleed-current injection to the common-emitter points of the main differential pairs were introduced, and these techniques are being used today in a wide range of circuit applications in a number of different IC technologies at frequencies as high as 75 GHz.

COLLABORATIVE FILTERING: A NEW APPROACH TO SEARCHING DIGITAL LIBRARIES

At Oregon State University (OSU), the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and the OSU Libraries are working together on a project to improve the effectiveness and accessibility of digital information created and collected by academic libraries. This project focuses on making digital resources more accessible through an innovative search interface that incorporates collaborative filtering. New approaches to search interfaces will help make the growing wealth of online content more accessible and useful. This paper discusses the problem, explains how collaborative filtering works, describes the System for Electronic Recommendation Filtering (SERF), and then presents initial results from an installation in the OSU Libraries. The productive collaboration at OSU between the Libraries and EECS portends the future of development of search systems; by working together, we can harness the expertise of librarians, computer scientists, and information users to develop more useful search interfaces and increase access to the libraries’ resources and services.

Upper extremity pain and computer use among engineering graduate students.

The objective of this study was to investigate risk factors associated with persistent or recurrent upper extremity and neck pain among engineering graduate students. A random sample of 206 Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) graduate students at a large public university completed an online questionnaire. Approximately 60% of respondents reported upper extremity or neck pain attributed to computer use and reported a mean pain severity score of 4.5 (+/-2.2; scale 0-10). In a final logistic regression model, female gender, years of computer use, and hours of computer use per week were significantly associated with pain. The high prevalence of upper extremity pain reported by graduate students suggests a public health need to identify interventions that will reduce symptom severity and prevent impairment.