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Session 2548 Sophomore Project/Capstone Course Glenn R. Blackwell ECET - Purdue University West Lafayette, IN blackwell@purdue.edu

abstract: This paper describes a new project course in ECET at Purdue University. It is a course taken by students in their 4th semester of the 2+2 ECET program, and may be considered a capstone course for the AS degree. In it the students must work with a time plan, and must follow a design guide that has them combine both analog and digital course concepts resulting in a finished project. They must use the principles of design for manufacturability (DFM) and design for testability (DFT), and must include the use of both active and passive surface mount technology (SMT) components. In addition to the circuit design, they must also use electronic computer aided design (ECAD) to design and lay out a printed circuit board (PCB), have the PCB made by a commercial PCB fabricator, test it, then populate the PCB and test the resulting printed circuit assembly (PCA). The design also includes a test port, which allows the instructor to add problems to the circuit, which the students must then troubleshoot and identify. The course culminates in both a written report and an oral report.

body As part of a curriculum redesign in the late 1990’s, the Purdue Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology department incorporated into the curriculum four required project courses: • ECET 196, a 2 credit hour first semester freshman course that required students to build an already-designed 3-output power supply, and use basic time plan techniques to maintain control of the project work. • ECET 296, a 2 credit hour sophomore course that required the students to design and construct an audio power amplifier while closely following both performance and hardware/circuit specifications. • ECET 396, a 4 credit hour junior course that required teams of 3-4 students to design and build a project based primarily on performance specifications, using time management and creating both oral and written reports. • ECET 496 &497, a 2-semester senior design sequence that requires the students to propose a project of their choosing, define the specifications, then design, construct, and test it. Final presentation of the project is to a group of faculty.

For a number of years, the Purdue EET/ECET program has also included a required sophomore course a 2-credit hour course in electronic troubleshooting, EET276. In recent years, the curriculum team responsible for the project courses, after discussions with both the faculty and the ECET Industrial Advisory Board (IAB), came to the conclusion that the 2 credit hour project course and the 2 credit hour troubleshooting course were not robust enough to properly serve their purposes in the curriculum. Additionally, it was felt necessary to add into the project

“Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition Copyright 2004, American Society for Engineering Education”

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Blackwell, G. (2004, June), Ecet Sophomore Project/Capstone Course Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13238