AC 2012-4732: ONLINE DELIVERY OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING LABORATORY COURSES

This paper presents our experiences and results in developing and delivering new laboratory experiments for the sophomore level Electric Circuits Lab, and Introduction to Digital Logic design courses completely online. The paper will clearly outline how we utilized a new pedagogy to re-write our laboratory experiments so that they can be completed by face-to-face and/or online students using new portable laboratory instrumentation devices, such as the Mobile Studio TM board. We also present detailed descriptions on how we used the Adobe Connect TM software to allow the students to demonstrate their design and laboratory experiment circuits to the course instructor from a remote location. We have successfully developed and delivered over 10 laboratory experiments completely online for the two sophomore level courses during the Spring 2011 semester. The laboratory experiments have been updated in the Fall 2011 semester with the addition of new Agilent X-Series Oscilloscopes with integrated Function Generators. The new oscilloscopes have optional LAN connection modules that allow students to control every feature of the oscilloscopes remotely using a web browser on their personal computer (PC) through a virtual front panel that looks and operates the same way as the real front panel of the scopes with the same associated keys and knobs. This implies that students who are conducting ECE laboratory experiments online will have access to the same type of equipment that is used by the students enrolled in the face-to-face (F2F) laboratory courses. The results have shown that the students were able to conduct most of the design and laboratory experiments required in the online lab courses without the need to be on campus. This new approach represents a major paradigm shift in the way higher education institutions should think when delivering Electrical Engineering education.