As this is the only electronics course in the 4-year curriculum of the Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, the ECCE Department decided to make this course as enjoyable for the students, as humanly possible.
Accordingly, the course must be tailored to respond to the interests of each and every class group. These interests are never the same, thus, the course design and presentation necessarily varies from one class group to another.
The course content will cover the interesting aspects of analog and digital electronics as perceived by the participants, and will cover all the required learning elements.
The course will follow the normal learning process of human beings, starting with the perception of presence or absence of something. This is exemplified by the question "who are the '1s' and '0s' anyway?" This goes on to evoke the wonders and AHA's of getting the '1s' and '0s' to dance, count, and control things. The students then reach a certain level of maturity and go on to play with continuum in control electronics. One project of the 2004 class was to make a "panda doll" move towards the source of a clapping sound. Detailed information is found at one of my pages: http://www.thcalasanz.com/thcal/42s_ps141_00.html.
The methodology is "project-based" and features a public presentation by the students at the end of the semester. Some brief highlights:
2.1. This is the only electronics course in the CS curriculum. With this in mind, the course design and its conduct will be a carefully guided interactive process to set the stage for the participants to enjoy the discovery of electronics.
2.2. The first session is designed for the teacher/facilitator to gain an appreciation of the individual and sub-group interests of the participants. The course and experiments will, then, be designed to cater to these interests.
2.3. The sequence and treatment of the learning elements of the curriculum will have to respond to the factors discovered above.
3.1. The outline will be made available after the planning session. An example of a typical outline is found in http://www.thcalasanz.com/thcal/42s_ps141_00.html.
3.2. The schedules will also be made available after the planning session. An example of a typical schedule is found in http://www.thcalasanz.com/thcal/42s_ps141_00.html.
3.3. The treatment of electronics from one school year to another, or from one section to another, may not be identical, although each of the sections will have covered all the learning elements one approximately month and a half before the semester comes to an end. The experiments performed during this first half are modules that will become part of their respective projects. The remaining time will be spent for the commissioning of the system, programming, and interfacing with the PC, the network, and whatever else are desired.
3.4. The semester ends with an acceptance ceremony, as one would find in an actual project. In the professional world, this is where the "retention payment" is released. In our case, this is where grades are submitted.
The management of the classroom shall be such as to facilitate the creation of an environment conducive to the person's growth, as well as, unleash and enhance aspects of personality that are helpful to "problem-solving" situations.
Very briefly, this development is expected along the lines of "freedom to think", management of work and learning so as to achieve high levels of motivation at work within the context of group and personal interaction, and the development of participative decision-making skills. The course hopes that the participants experience the joy of being able to contribute and take accountability for a successfully completed job, within the confines of the allotted schedule.
The four (4) hours of laboratory work are devoted to consultation. The students may call the teacher/facilitator for assistance at any time. In addition, the teacher/facilitator also goes around to check the work of any group. Given the limited time for the semester, the students are encouraged to ask questions early enough to avoid wasting time.
Finally, the teacher/facilitator makes it a point to underline the process of:
Finding the answers on their respective boards and components.
These are the ones that actually present the answers within this learning environment.