Using Mixed Exam Methods to Enhance Students Learning for Electronics Courses

This paper presents several non-traditional exam methods that serve both introductory analog electronics and advanced electronics courses in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) department at the University of Evansville (UE). The study is focused on classes from Fall 2019 - Fall 2020. Despite the COVID disruption in 2020, students' outcomes and final course survey indicated that these methods enhanced their understanding, promoted their interest and motivation in transistor topics. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.

DEI Student Ambassadors Program

In this paper we describe the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Student Ambassadors program at Seattle University and the initiatives and activities that the ambassadors have been engaged in. This program drew inspiration from several Bias Busters groups created by industry and academia, especially the Bias Busters @ Carnegie Mellon University and the Bias Busters in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at University of California Berkeley. The student ambassadors were given broad objectives to improve the college community and educate the student population about diversity, equity, and inclusion. An initial planned project of the ambassadors was to organize a DEI Takeover Week during spring of 2020. This project had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The student ambassadors took this as an opportunity to instead develop programs focused on equity and inclusion issues that arose due to the pandemic and the transition to remote / virtual instruction. The DEI Student Ambassadors organized Zoom Town Halls that were open to all students, faculty, and staff in the college to engage in frank conversations about the challenges of the pandemic and how they connected to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Additionally, the DEI Student Ambassadors developed theater-based workshops about microaggressions and bystander intervention. These workshops were administered in a number of classes, and highlighted real-world scenarios drawn from student surveys conducted in spring 2018 as well as the DEI Student Ambassadors' own experiences. Response to the DEI Student Ambassadors and the programs they have developed has been largely very positive. We conclude by discussing plans for how to continue, adapt, and expand this program. © 2022 American Society for Engineering Education.

Moving MSc Software Development course online: adaptation of the large class module to a distance learning model

The Covid-19 pandemic brought dramatic changes to higher education settings, particularly for curriculum delivery, moving quickly to online learning in March 2020, which for many was the first experience of teaching and learning in the virtual environment.This paper discusses the experience of redesigning the MSc Computing Foundations module and adapting it to a distance learning model using both synchronous and asynchronous delivery at the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Queen's University Belfast in response to the challenges brought to higher education by the pandemic. The module is a fundamental compulsory module with an intake of 100+ students in the part-time class studying the conversional MSc course in Software Development.This paper focuses on the challenges and opportunities faced by large class students during this unprecedented move online, and changes made to the curriculum to facilitate the move to online teaching and learning using the conceptual framework for effective online courses. The paper reflects on student feedback to online educational activities including synchronous and asynchronous content delivery, discussion forums, ungraded formative quizzes, formative and summative assessments delivered online for a postgraduate cohort studying part-time. Sustained level of student engagement was evidenced through statistics collected from the virtual learning environment.This paper further discusses how the above has transformed teaching of the Computing Foundations module for the large cohort, focusing on the student experience only, and reflecting on how these online teaching practices contribute to provision of education with a view what developments became a success and could be turn to advantage and what was not effective and should be eliminated post-pandemic. Adaptation of the Computing Foundation module to the new model of online delivery has been successful in the 2020-2021 academic year, and the module has become a distance module delivered fully online in the 2021-2022 academic year. The transformation has helped to cope with a "new normal"in an increasingly hybrid higher education ecosystem as students' and educators' involvement into learning activities continued to be altered in the post-pandemic society. © 2022 IEEE.