Emily Marasco

Integrating creativity into elementary electrical engineering education using CDIO and project-based learning

Microelectronics and embedded systems industries are seeking creative engineers to create new and innovative technologies at the same time as a decline in post-secondary engineering enrollment. Studies show that students may lose interest in science, mathematics, engineering and technology (STEM) as early as elementary school, believing that these areas are not innovative or creative. Using the CDIO Initiative framework for engineering education, this study looks at the development of a creative, project-based learning program called Exploring Electrical Engineering, designed to teach an introduction to electronics and electricity through integration with other disciplines, such as English, social studies, physical education and fine arts. By introducing a creative and cross-disciplinary component to STEM education, we propose to increase the appeal of electrical engineering to children who have expressed interest in other subjects, and encourage innovative, exploratory problem-solving.

Using gamification for engagement and learning in electrical and computer engineering classrooms

Within technical engineering courses, students may struggle with difficult concepts, overwhelming workloads, loss of motivation and a lack of classroom engagement. Studies have shown that students who are engaged and creative in their education have improved learning outcomes in technical understanding and application. This work proposes the use of gamification for the development of both creative and technical understanding. Gamification is the application of game mechanics and typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play, etc.) to technical education as a method of encouraging student engagement with course material in a compelling and familiar way. This paper describes the development and implementation of a creative design project within an electronic design automation course, as well as a further teaching and learning research evaluation by general public focus groups.

Enhancing EDA education through gamification

As electronics industry leaders seek creative engineers capable of designing solutions to the circuit problems of the future, such as the end of Moores Law, microelectronics education must incorporate more creativity and innovative design approaches. This paper proposes the use of gamification for encouraging creative thinking among students in electronic design automation education. The education module described in this work may also be used to harness the problem-solving techniques of game users through crowdsourcing and data mining. By integrating electronic design automation algorithms with game mechanics, it may be possible to find new solutions to circuit design problems.

Exploring Electrical Engineering through movement: Going with the Flow and Programming Puzzles

The Exploring Electrical Engineering program will electrify your understanding of engineering! Developed as part of a larger K-6 engineering education research initiative, this workshop paper details two activities for exploring electrical and computer engineering concepts for grade 3-5 students through the use of cross-disciplinary concepts in physical education and movement. Activity 1: Going with the Flow uses human electrons and circuit components to demonstrate electron behaviour in parallel and series circuits. Activity 2: Programming Puzzles introduces code design through life-size maze creation and completion. These creative activities have been tested as part of on-going research work in several classrooms, with over 350 elementary school students participating, and have resulted in an increased interest in electrical engineering as a future career.

The impact of industry-organized contests on EDA education

The Electronic Design Automation (EDA) community is faced with an exponential increase in the complexity of the problems that it has to solve. These problems challenge the EDA community to find innovative techniques for training the next generation of researchers. This work discuss how international contests in EDA can play a pivotal role in the education and industry practices. We discuss the impact of our these contests on bridging the gap between industry and academia, training of the graduate students and building collaborations between different researchers. We compare the impact of papers originated from the effort of team winners in such contests compared to the best papers in annual International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) conference and Design Automation Conference (DAC). Finally, we also discuss the impact of the contests on the industry organizers and how they benefit from them.

Comparing amateur and professional musician skill levels using spectrogram representation and simpler statistical parameters

Amateurs playing an instrument have difficulty reaching a professional level without practice and training in the presence of a mentor. We show that the skill level of a person playing a French horn could be distinguished by differences in the tone shape displayed via a spectrogram produced using the short-term Fourier transform. The appropriateness of this approach for comparing amateur and professional timbre was unclear for our target audience: Junior High School musicians. Simpler statistical parameters used for characterizing normal and abnormal electro-encephalographic and vibroarthrographic signals were investigated. These parameters summarize the tone characteristics within a single number, opening up their use within an artificial intelligence context. It was discovered that using the kurtosis measure led to better differentiation of skill levels than the complexity measure, with skewness providing no differentiation.