Eric Durant

Toward a modern curriculum for computer engineering

Participants attending this conference tutorial will learn about the development of a computer engineering curricular report. They will assist in the revision process to update the joint ACM and IEEE document known as CE2004. The objective is to ensure that the new document, CE2016, is a forward-looking summary of the educational practices in the field.

CE2016: Updated computer engineering curriculum guidelines

Joint ACM/IEEE Computer Society undergraduate computer engineering curriculum guidelines are slated for release in 2016. These update the 2004 guidelines commonly known as CE2004. The presenters are part of the task group leading the revisions and will give an overview of the latest draft. Participants will engage in discussions on potential improvements to the guidelines to ensure that they are useful to programs as they work to ensure their curricula reflect the state-of-the-art in computer engineering education and practice and are relevant for the coming decade.

Work in progress — A balanced, freshman-first computer engineering curriculum

A freshman-first Computer Engineering curriculum replaced a more conventional curriculum at the Milwaukee School of Engineering in academic year 2006-2007. The new curriculum was designed around two key principles: topical balance and freshman-first. The result is a curriculum that balances the core computer engineering topics throughout all four academic years and addresses curricular issues discovered through the collection of ABET materials.

Computer engineering curriculum guidelines

Participants of this pre-conference workshop will learn about the development of computer engineering curricula reports. They will also learn about the revision process and will have the opportunity to provide comment and opinion on drafting an update of the joint ACM and IEEE Computer Society document from 2004 titled, “Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Computer Engineering” known also as CE2004. The authors of this workshop welcome all participation including overall comments and targeted editing assistance from the computer engineering education community. This activity will ensure that an updated document is a forward-looking summary of state-of-the-art educational practices in the computer engineering field.

Work in progress - Year 2 results from a balanced, freshman-first computer engineering curriculum

The Milwaukee School of Engineering replaced a traditional computer engineering curriculum that located the majority of the core computer engineering topics in the final two years of study with a new freshman-first curriculum in academic year 2006-2007. The new curriculum was designed around the 2004 guideline report of the IEEE/ACM Joint Taskforce on Computer Engineering Curricula but took a more aggressive approach by distributing the computer engineering topics throughout all four years of study. The result is a balanced, freshman-first curriculum that presents software, hardware, math, science, and humanities side-by-side for most of the twelve undergraduate quarters. The goals of the curriculum was to improve retention, reduce prerequisite material time gaps, and respond to the industrial advisory committee request for improved soft skills. All three of these goals have been met: first-to-second year retention has improved, large gaps in hardware coverage have disappeared, and a course on teamwork and leadership has been taught for the first time.

Launching curricular guidelines for computer engineering: CE2016

ACM and the IEEE Computer Society plan to re-lease their computer engineering curriculum guidelines at the end of this calendar year. The curricular report, tagged CE2016, reflects the state-of-the-art in computer engineering education and practice that would be relevant for the coming decade. This panel presentation provides an overview of the report and it also provides unique perspectives from some steering committee members and other interested parties. The authors and participants will en-gage in discussions on ways to implement the guidelines to form new programs or to modify existing programs. The authors wel-come all audience participation including overall comments and targeted editing assistance from the computer engineering education and industry communities.

CE2016: Guidelines for Forward-Looking Computer Engineering Curricula

Computer engineering programs must keep pace with rapid advances in the field to ensure that their graduates are prepared for practice.

CE2016 steering committee: a short update

T he CE2016 Steering Committee, composed of representatives from academia and industry and jointly funded by ACM and the IEEE Computer Society, is charged with updating the 2004 report on curriculum guidelines for undergraduate degree programs in computer engineering [1]. The 2004 curriculum guidelines divide the computer engineering Body of Knowledge (BoK) into 18 Knowledge Areas (KAs), with each KA containing a topic list, learning outcomes, and a suggested minimum core coverage time. Obviously, the computer engineering world has seen substantial changes since 2004, prompting the need for a revision. The CE2016 Steering Committee was initially formed in 2011, with community outreach efforts for progress and feedback resulting in a 2012 SIGCSE special session, 2012 Frontiers in Education (FIE) special session, 2013 FIE pre-conference workshop, and a 2014 FIE special session. Much of 2013 was spent in research/ discussion on technological trends within computer engineering since 2004 and its impact on the BoK, particularly in areas such as computer security, multi-core/many-core architectures, system-on-chip design, new software development methods (e.g., Agile) and mobile computing. Initial drafts of revised KAs have been produced and were presented for feedback to participants at the 2014 FIE special session. Looking forward, a draft for public release and feedback is scheduled for spring 2015. Feedback will also be sought at other conference venues in 2015 such as an Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Division panel discussion at American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference and presentations at other conferences such as the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) and FIE. It is hoped that a final draft will be produced in 2016. Community feedback on the various drafts is critical to producing a quality result, so please consider providing comments when the opportunity arises. Further information about the CE2016 effort can be obtained by contacting any of this article’s authors. Ir

Perceptually motivated ANC for hearing-impaired listeners

The goal of noise control in hearing aids is to improve listening perception. In this paper we propose modifying a perceptually motivated active noise control (ANC) algorithm by incorporating a perceptual model into the cost function, resulting in a dynamic residual noise spectrum shaping technique based on the time-varying residual noise. The perceptual criterion to be minimized could be sharpness, discordance, annoyance, etc. As an illustrative example, we use loudness perceived by a hearing-impaired listener as the cost function. Specifically, we design the spectrum shaping filter using the listeners hearing loss and the dynamic residual noise spectrum. Simulations show significant improvements of 3-4 sones over energy reduction (ER) for severe high-frequency losses for some common noises that would be 6-12 without processing. However, average loudness across a wide range of noises is only slightly better than with ER, with greater improvements realized with increasing hearing loss. We analyze one way in which the algorithm fails and trace it to over-reliance on the common psychoacoustic modelling simplification that auditory channels are independent to a first approximation. This suggests future work that may improve performance.

Efficient convex optimization for real-time robust beamforming with microphone arrays

This paper presents an efficient implementation of a robust adaptive beamforming algorithm based on convex optimization for applications in the processing-constrained environment of a digital hearing aid. Several modifications of the standard interior point barrier method are introduced for use where the array data covariance matrix is changing rapidly relative to the algorithms convergence rate. These efficiency improvements significantly simplify the computation without affecting the algorithms fast convergence, and are useful for real-time adaptive beamforming regardless of the rate of array correlation change. Simulation results show that this implementation is numerically stable and succeeds where many minimum-variance distortionless response (MVDR) solutions fail.