ASEE 2013 Workshop Re-Cap 2 of 3 Student Centric Learning with Embedded Systems

When the last of the workshop attendees filtered into the room, Dr. Valvano began his presentation. 

After the introduction to the group, Dr. Valvano began with a statement: "Engineers do two things: They either make systems... or they interface systems to each other,  [it's with this starting point that we begin to think how to teach students so they look at the world in this manner]"

[To best understand how to create engineers it is best that we understand the objectives that we are faced with,] Dr. Valvano continued. 

He then described the objectives that were set at his own school, The University of Texas at Austin.

There, at UT Austin, they decided the goal  was to produce Students that are employable by industry, able to contribute to what ever place they go to work.  In addition,  the department wanted to find a way to improve the educational effort so it cost less resouces and improved performance. They concluded in order to achieve this, the focus had to shift from just an Educator to creating an entire Educational team. 

Dr. Valvano then shifted gears from the overall objective and needs of the department to speaking about his "Teaching Pedadogies"  that shaped the approach. These pedadogies he boiled down into six concepts: 

1. A curriculum design that has a bottoms up approach for fundamentals and basic concepts. 
2. Balanced by a lab-centered activities that encourage students to apply the concepts (top down).
3. Give students the tools and the resources to feel empowered in their courses. 
4. Build habits in students that encourages them to be life-long learners to help them develop in their careers and want to develop their skills. 
5. Be flexible that students are not all created equally and learn at different speeds and ways. 
6. Focus on a team-approach, expanding a network beyond only, you the Educator. 

Curriculum Design: A Bottoms Up Approach 

The first was to look at the curriculum design.

"I am a big believer of bottoms up teaching so when I teach Operating Systems -- I start from silicon," he said as he described teaching Real Time  Operating Systems. 

Although Dr. Valvano believed in getting students into applications early, he didn't believe that students should skip over understanding the basic building blocks that make up the concept that students needed to learn. 

If a concept is too complicated to learn, then Dr. Valvano suggested to choose a simpler example. 

[In the end, we need to have students understand one system, and how that system works.
Then we have the students understand another system... and how that system works.
Then we have them connect the two systems and have them understand what changes happen in each system and the new system they have created.] 

Using Labs to Keep Students Engaged- Lab Centric

Although the curriculum is bottoms up, to make sure that students apply the concepts, a tops down approach is needed. There is no better way to introduce this type of environment then by using labs. 

"Students don't actually learn anything in my lecture," Dr. Valvano explained, "they actually learn when they go into the lab and do something."

However, with labs, it's critical that the labs are well defined, docmented and student aren't following just a recipie but actually are engaging with the material. 

He then suggested, "there is no better way to get students to learn than to ask them to teach, so using undergraduates as teaching assistants is something you want to consider." 

Students should own their own board- and they can do it without breaking the bank

What has helped enable students to feel empowered is when they have the ability to own and take home their own hardware. 

"Letting students take home their own board means they can show mom and dad what they do in school, or if they have their own project they want to work on." 

He then began to show the options they use at University of Texas at Austin. 

"There are boards such as the TI- Stellaris/Tiva LaunchPad that can be added to a course for as little as 15.00!, that means that every student can purchase one for less than a pizza."

He spent some time speaking about the other TI-ARM board options that are used, including the LM3S1968 board that the TI-University Program offers exclusively for education. 

   
EKS-LM3S1968 on (left) and Stellaris LaunchPad EK-LM4F120XL (right) 

Not all students are created the same... give them opportunities to learn outside of the lab and at their own speed. 

With owning their own boards, Dr. Valvano reccomended getting students engaged outside of the lab. 

Giving students multipe ways to consume the information increases the probablility of success of the student retaining the information. 

Homework, Labs and most importantly projects are some of the best ways you can introduce this into the classroom. 

Valvano spoke about his office, which was stocked with miscleanous parts, interesting development kits and anything that students may want to request. 

"I had a student come in and ask for 500+ LED's, which when I asked her what she was going to do with it... she told me that she was building an interactive LED display coffee table. I had to give her the parts and all I asked was that she show me what she did afterwards."

The other benefit to letting them take the material out of the lab is... you never know what students will come up with on their own time. 

"[What I ] find is half of my students are smarter than I am, so I decided that I wanted to just empower then, and get out of the way." 

Teaching isn't a one-man project... you must have advocates... the best way to get advocates? Invite them along!

The most important part to crafting an educational process is to create as many advocates as you can. 

Letting TA's get involved in the following year's course improvements-- gets you more eyes on what can be improved. 
Having co-worker staff involved to make sure that students are learning pre and post requisites gets fellow educators on board with your methods.
Most importantly?

Getting the administrators and anyone external involved by contests, newspapers, ... any sort of public attention.
Gets student's a place to show off.
Gives the department an opportunity to show what ECE actually is.
Gets the University public relations and marketing... it's just an overall win.  

Competitions Competions... Competitions... -- Make yourself the Master of Ceremonies

Where Dr. Valvano really lit up is when he described competitions. 

"Games and competitions at every level make students learn. It's there we see the what creativity can empower," he said, "I believe in putting competitions at every level of my courses, even the freshmen have competitions!"

[ Competitions are a good way to get students ] to appreciate relevance. Example, I tell them that if they learn how to use an H-Bridge driver, they can make thier robots move faster, but I don't show them how to do it. 

"How do you make students design something that works? You make them have to use it where their peers can see, [ that's how you get motivated to learn students]"

Sharing Teaching: Textbooks, Labs, Homework, Projects... demonstration is proof. 

Teaching Material Discussed 

1. Textbook
2. Recommended Hardware and Software
3. Teaching Resources including
   1. labs
   2. homework examples 
   3. lecture examples 
4. End of Semester Project

Textbooks:

Three textbooks employ many approaches to learning and does not just include the re-formatting of data-sheets and theory. Instead each book focuses on mixing fundamentals with application based learning. 
As such, each book has been created with a set of exercises, lab examples, checkpoints and homework examples.

Since it's part of the pedadogy, to have students own the equipment, it's important that each book + hardware combination didn't cost more than a traditional textbook, so Dr. Valvano published his book with a self publishing service  CreateSpace, which allowed him to get the book cost down below $50.00 a piece. 

Choose Hardware Platform

Choose Software IDE

Valvano Ware Examples

Stellaris Ware Examples 

Most of the current examples run with the EKS-LM3S1968 development board. The board features TI's Cortex M3 (formerly Luminary Micro) Stellaris processor, but this tool is made available for Education ONLY. 

The books are written to be used with the Stellaris LaunchPad- fully featured tool for under $14.00, in August 2013, this will be replaced with the Tiva LaunchPad, but all material is compatible. Additional LED display suggested as option. 

The first edition of the book uses ARM's Keil uVision 4 and Dr. Valvano's hardware abstraction layer named, "Valvano-Ware"  To obtain a copy of this software, please contact our University Partner ARM Limited. 

A great value for any University, TI's own Code Composer Studio IDE. Examples have been adapted into this IDE. Free for academics and students alike, a good option if you are using any other TI embedded processor in your classroom. 

What can be shared:

There are 3 courses that are of focus: EE319K, EE445L and EE445M 
All of these courses have the following available to be shared:

Lab Examples
Software Examples
Lab Manual and Homework
Example Code for the Hardware
Full Class Websites

these work best in combination with using the appropriate textbook for each course. 

EE 319K

Introduction to Microcontrollers
Required of all ECE Students
average 400 students per year

Freshman/Sophomore level 

EE 445L

Microprocessor Application and Organization
(Follow on from EE319K) 
average 200 students per year

Sophomore/Junior Level

EE 445L

Embedded and Real Time Systems Laboratory
(Follow on from EE 445L ) 
average 60 students per year

Senior/ Graduate Level

Textbook:  Volume 1: Introduction to ARM Cortex-M Microcontrollers, 978-1477508992

Competition:

Students are encouraged to create a game using the display, the touch buttons and graphics libraries. 

Textbook: Volume 2: Real-Time Interfacing to ARM Cortex-M Microcontrollers, 978-1463590154

Competition: 

Students learn how to lay out their own development board and use that board in their projects. 

Textbook: Volume 3: Real-Time Operating Systems for ARM Cortex-M Microcontrollers, 978-1466468863    

Competition:

Students make a robot based on a $1.00 frisbee. The robots have to race against each other. 

Conclusions: 

Wrapping up, Dr. Valvano began to summarize. 

[If you make your curriculum centered around students, you'll find that students will be your biggest assistants in teaching.]

[I tell] students the following, "True Engineering experience occurs not with your eyes and ears, but rather with your fingers and elbows. In other words, engineering education does not happen by listening in class or reading a book rather it happens by designing under the watchful eyes of a patient mentor. So, go build something today, then show it to someone that you respect!" 

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