152 J.R. Blough In recent years the enrollment in this course has grown to a large enough size that it is no longer possible to ask the students to perform a final project. The ME-EM department at MTU does not have the resources available to support the large number of students doing real world projects. As can be seen from the project list above, many of these projects required that students have access to engine dynamometers or significant research laboratories. When there was a fewer students in the course, nearly all of the students were doing research as part of their graduate degree and hence already had access to a research laboratory to do the project. One of the reasons the enrollment in the course has grown so much is that the ME-EM department at MTU has significantly increased the number of graduate students enrolled, both PhD and MS. The bulk of the increase in the number of MS students has been coursework only students who do not have access to laboratory facilities to do projects. Given that it is not possible to do the final projects the course now requires the students to do the Order Tracking assignment and take a final exam. There have also been a number of students over the years who have requested to take the course even though they are off campus working at a company. These students are either on co-op assignments or working full time. To offer the course to these students the on-campus lectures have been recorded and streamed to the the DL students on demand. To ensure that the students have the resources to complete the assignments each student has been interviewed prior to allowing them to register for the course. Through the discussion and email with the potential students it is determined what equipment they have available to them which can be used in the assignments. Given that not all DL students have the same equipment as is available on campus, the assignments are adapted to the equipment available. This approach for the DL students has worked very well though it only allows a small number of students to take the course as most students don’t have the necessary equipment available. 13.7 Grading The grading for the course is based off of a combination of the students grades from the assignments (45 %), Quizzes (15 %), Midterm Exam (20 %), and Final Exam (20 %). One unusual aspect about the grade for the assignments is that the students are given two chances to complete each assignment except the Order Tracking assignment which is due late enough in the semester that a second chance is not possible. The goal is that the students learn the material, if their first submission does not result in a grade above 85 %, it is marked “Fix and Return” and the students get another chance to improve their grade with no penalty for requiring the second submission. The midterm exam is a combination of an in-class exam, 70 % of grade, and a take-home exam, 30 % of grade. The in-class exam is required to eliminate the possibility of cheating as that was becoming a problem when only a take home exam was given. The take-home exam is still given as it contains Matlab processing, a question where the students have to describe how they would make a measurement in a real world scenario and a problem where the students have to identify and get a price quote for a data acquisition system which meets a given criteria. The real world problem is given to force the students to put the presented material in context of how to use it. The data acquisition system problem is given to force the students to understand what choices and prices are available when they have to procure a system on their own, it also forces them to learn how to determine the capabilities of a system by reading specification sheets, manuals, advertisements, : : : etc. Both the in-class midterm exam and the final exam are 1.5 h long and require the students to write significant Matlab code based on their assignments to keep them honest in doing their own assignments. 13.8 Conclusions This course with its combination of experimental data acquisition and digital signal processing in Matlab has proven to be very successful in teaching the students a broad background in many different DSP and measurement methods. The value of the course is shown by the size of the enrollment in the course and the fact that most faculty in the ME-EM department at MTU which do experimental work require their students to take the course. Over the years the course continues to evolve to handle different groups of students and to keep topics relevant to the research which is being performed by faculty in the ME-EM department. Occasionally, a EE student has taken the course and provided feedback that “They finally understood the DSP which they had seen in their undergraduate signal processing course!”, this was due to the practical discussions and lectures vs. the theoretical lectures in their previous course.
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