My primary goal with this blog has been to understand why enrollments in electronics are dropping and students not enrolling. But just as big a problem in many schools is the retention problem. In other words, why do students drop after they first enroll? Having taught for many years and talked with students about this problem, I believe it a combination of student personal issues which the school cannot address (lack of money, family problems, illness, etc.) and school problems. Here are some of the things I see that are a factor in dropouts:
1. Boring classes - Most students drop out in the first several electronic courses. Typically these are the DC/AC courses where the theory is heavy. Most of this material is pretty boring stuff. I have had more than one student ask me, "Lou, why am I learning this? What does this have to do with electronics?" No kidding. The only answer you can give is that electrical theory is the basis for electronics and you have to learn that first. The student comes to learn the exciting things in electronics and is initially confronted with some heavy duty theory, physics derived, and we bore him or her to death.
2. Heavy math - Most of who teach electronics don't think that the algebra and little bit of trig required to learn DC and AC is any big deal. How could it be so difficult? Yet so many students come into these initial classes unprepared with the math. Even if a college algebra course is required as a prerequisite, it is often not enought and the student has the feeling that there is entirely too much math. So many ask, "why do I need to know this? When can I work on some electronic equipment?"
3. Failure to stimulate the student's interest - Shouldn't the very first courses a student encounters be positive experiences? I think so. Yet, in the public community colleges what you get is basic math, English comp, and other non-electronic stuff that is required. I can personally remember my own reaction my freshman year in college. When do I get to the electronics? Not for a long time, as it turns out. If we had any sense, we would treat each student as a treasure to be protected. We must stimulate him or her. Generate interest. Motivate. When I mentioned this idea at a meeting in the near past, one faculty member said that students should shut up and take the curriculum we offer in the way we offer it and not question when they get what. Maybe we have gotten away with that just about as long as we can. Students want to get on with their lives. We live in an instant gratification world and putting things off is not the way to gain a student's interest or loyalty.
4. Student attention span - Our students today were brought up on TV, video games and Game Boys. They are used to instant action. They are visual learners. They do not read well and they tune out in long lectures. They want to see something happen or make something happen. The attention span of the average person is supposed to be 15-20 minutes, but I bet that it is less in today's young people. Students get the impression in typical electronic courses, that things are moving too slowly and they want to get to the "good stuff" sooner. Why can't we accommodate that? At least a little bit?
5. Out of date irrelevant curriculum - I think that our typical AAS degree curriculum is archaic. Yes, students still have to learn the fundamentals but what fundamentals are needed today? Not the same ones we used to teach. We need to take a hard look at those fundamentals and ask, is this really necessary to know, today? So much of what we teach now is like that. It was once important because electronics was different. For example, we worked at the circuit level back then. Now we work at a higher systems level. Do you really need to learn Thevenin's theorem and loop and nodal equations? That is only the tip of the iceberg as far a curriculum goes. While most students don't know what they are supposed to know, they do have a sense of reality and they are not getting it with the current curricula.
I keep coming back to the curricula as the source of our problems not only for declining enrollments but also dropouts. Why can't we fix this? Let's turn the curriculum upside down and give students some interesting, cool stuff up front. Really turn them on to the subject, get them hooked and then later half way through the degree start saying, look you uys, you do have to know some theory and math so here it is. Then make the theory and math relevant and easier to learn in the context of the subject.
I will come back to this curruculum reform issue as it seems to me to be the core of the problem. Besides, just think how much fun it will be to do this. Let's take the generic curricula we use now, that is the same now as it was 40 or so years ago (I am not making that up, I can prove it.), and blow it away and start from scratch. If we do that, we may have the opposite problem of too many students and not enough space, teachers, etc. What a great problem that would be.
2 comments:
Steve Fleeman from Rock Valley College:
The folks at Purdue in West Lafayette introduced the notion of making the study of electronics more exciting 2-3 years ago. (A teaching seminar was held and sponsored by their publisher Delmar.) They really modified the classic model and wrote several text books to support it. Because those text books do not support the classic (boring?) model, I suspect the books are not adopted widely, but I must confess that I have not checked lately.
The first "circuit analysis" class starts with KCL rather than Ohm's law! When asked about it the response was KCL is easier than Ohm's law. It deals with adding and subtracting. Ohm's law is harder as it deals with multiplication and division. Think about it.
Applications abound. Series circuits start with examples like the voltage divider found on the base of a BJT. In fact, because the electronics examples permeate the circuit discussions, they were able to eliminate a "classic" electronics class. You have to admit that they were/are really taking a new look at the EET curriculum.
I posted a survey on the Listserve several years ago and posed several questions about EET curriculum. One consensus was to teach op amps first. Discrete amplifier circuits should be regarded as an advanced electronics (elective?) course. Again, this requires a complete rethinking of exactly what we do and how we accomplish it.
Roy Brixen, College of San Mateo:
The other issue that turns students off is that electronics technology programs at the CC are just not any fun. Think about it. Most of use got excited about electronics when we were young because we built something. When I was 11 years old, my Dad and I spent about a month collecting the parts and building a crystal radio. It was very cool and fun to ground one side of the antenna coil to the cold water pipe and attach the other side of the coil to that 65' long wire antenna my dad and I put up together (first time I'd been up a ladder onto the roof of our house). Sitting there, wearing my "cans", picking around in my crystal with a rebent safety pin from my Mom's sewing box, and listening to three or four AM stations at once.
I had no idea about how the thing worked and why I needed to stack 2" square sheets of wax paper and tin foil together sandwiched between two pieces of card board and knotted together. And I had no concept of crystal detection. But, I was sure proud of my radio and I spend many nights listening to Buddy Holly rock-and-roll (plus all those adult stations with programs like "The FBI in Peace and War").
One interesting thing did happen that changed my life forever. I took my crystal radio to school to show my science teacher. She was very impressed with the workmanship and wanted me to tell her how it worked. I could show her how to work it (I was a very early appliance operator) but I could not tell her how it worked.
She took me to the school library and found me a copy of Marcus and Marcus, Elements of Radio. (If you remember this book, the first half was a qualitative discussion of radio while the second half was a quantitative discussion of the same topics.) I was still learning symbolic math so the second half was difficult--but I remember reading the first half of the book twice. I went back to my science teacher and told her exactly how my little crystal set worked.
Point being, I was so jazzed about what I had built that I had to find out about how it worked and WHY it worked. A year later I was able to understand the math in the second half of the book--that made the process even better.
OK, some brave soul needs to try this concept. Yeah, we have to teach DC circuit theory. But way is it so damn boring. It doesn't do anything. However, a simple project changes everything. Why no use a multimeter as a vehicle to teach the theory. The amp meter is a great example of parallel circuits, the volt meter is a great example of series circuits, and the ohm meter (done right) is a great example of a series parallel circuit. And we can even introduce a bit of AC with the diode and a couple of caps.
So, you start with a sack of parts and when you finish, you've got a full function multimeter. If you want to modernize it, dump the analog meter movement for a digital module (but, you just blew off some great applications of magnetics).
Why not develop a generic lab manual, using a multimeter circuit as the focus point, and write 12 to 14 labs using the parts of the meter and the embedded theory. Tie the labs to all the popular textbooks out there and see what happens. I'll bet there might be a bit more interest in sticking around.
How many of you remember AM radio kits. I learned circuit theory in the early 60s building a five tube radio. Rectification and filtering, power amp, preamp, tuned circuits, oscillators--you name it and it's all there. Oh, and don't forget the speaker, so you can actually hear the thing amplify. How many of our present labs in an analog circuits class call it a day when the student has measured the input signal and the output signal, verified gain with math, and packed it up for the lab.
I've seen some modern circuits lab manuals where the student could build all the circuits and never hear them. We've managed to take all the fun and excitment and pride of accomplishment out of the class. Sure, it's real neat when Rc in parallel with RL divided by little re plus the unbypassed emitter resistance produces a gain of 13 and the student measured Vout and Vin, does a division problem, and gets a gain of 12.8. Wouldn't it be interesting to see the response of the class after this activity to actually HEAR a gain of 13 (and piss off the English teacher down the hall because of all the excitement coming from your lab). Surely we can figure a way to add this little feature for a big payoff in class excitement.
Finally, I've stopped segregating my students in lab. Beginners and advanced all lab together. The advanced students can help you teach. They get a big thrill in helping the new ones. And the new ones can see what fun things are in store for them (trick being, there really really has to be some fun things coming their way). The new ones can actually see where all this beginning hard work and tough theory will be put to use. Try it, the results are interesting. You work a bit harder as a teacher--switching gears a lot as you move from lab station to lab station--but there is a bit of a reward here when you witness, out of the corner of your eye, a fourth semester student reaching over and helping a first semester student use a small screwdriver to properly mechanically zero a Simpson 260.
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