In an ideal world, engineering students would seamlessly apply what they have learned in the classroom to the lab. Unfortunately, gaps sometimes persist between classroom lectures and lab work.
Penn Practice Associate Professor, Thomas Farmer, offered strategies on how to bridge those gaps on Wednesday, March 18th. As part of this spring’s CETLI Series, organized by ESE CETLI Fellow, Alexander James Geers, Dr. Farmer’s talk focused on Supplementing Learning through Circuit Simulation Tools. As such, Farmer reviewed how he connects lectures and homework to simulation and lab work.
Farmer based his strategies on lessons learned as a TA during his doctoral work in Computer Engineering at George Washington University. As a TA in the lab, Farmer often reviewed relevant material that students missed during lectures. “That was fine. I loved teaching,” Farmers says. “But it wasn’t efficient.” Consequently, Farmer determined that if he ever taught, he would ensure that his course lectures and labs remained in sync.
That opportunity came in 2012. That’s when the leadership at Penn Engineering decided to sync the lectures and labs in ESE 2150 Electrical Circuits and Systems into one course. Prior, two separate courses covered the material. Students could take both courses in the fall semester. Or one in the fall and one in the spring, Farmer explains, adding that they were taught by separate professors.
When designing ESE 2150, Farmer determined that he wanted the homework to serve as preparation for the lab. Each homework had eight problems. The final problem served as the root for that week’s lab work, Farmer says. Using the simulator after completing the homework, students learned how to put circuits together, how to figure out if they had the parts required for measurement, Farmer explains. The simulator would also show that if the students’ calculations did not add up, it indicated the student had done something wrong. “When they arrived in class, the students would build on the hardware problem, build the circuit, measure and debug.”
Further, the work completed in the ESE 2150 Circuits and Systems course prepared students to take the circuit and put it into a much larger system, Farmer explains. Throughout the lab, he and his TA’s would ask students probing questions such as, “what would you use your circuit for? To replace resistors with sensors?”
While Professor Farmer no longer teaches ESE 2150, he has applied using homework/simulation as preparation for the lab in other undergraduate courses such as ESE 3190 Fundamentals of Solid-State Circuits. During the March 18th presentation, Farmer explained how he has fine-tuned his approach to syncing course lectures, to homework and simulation, to lab work over the years. Scheduling remains instrumental to success, Farmer says. But so does teaching lab safety and how to measure currents and voltages. Having experienced TA’s remains fundamental as well. Subsequently, Farmer strives to build a pipeline between knowledgeable students, to junior, to senior TA’s.
When the discussion opened to questions, one student wondered if using the simulator skewed the students’ ability to master fundamental knowledge. Professor Farmer conceded that the simulator could allow students to take shortcuts in the lab. However, his course exams act as the final measurement to test their knowledge.
Professor Farmers works both in the ESE and CIS departments. Beyond ESE 2150 and ESE 3190, Farmer has taught several courses including but not limited to ESE 1500 Digital Audio Basics, and ESE 5780 RFIC (Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit) Design as well as CIS 2400 Introduction to Computer Systems. In addition, Professor Farmer serves as the Director, MCIT Online Master’s Degree Program.