IMPROVING DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING COURSE WITH REAL TIME PROCESSING EXPERIENCES FOR ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY STUDENTS

摘要

In this paper, we present our pedagogies for teaching digital signal processing (DSP) with real-time processing experiences. In the past, teaching the DSP course for electrical and computer engineering technology (ECET) program was often a challenge, due to the heavy use of mathematics in the course. Our technology students prefer visualization, computer-related activities, and hands-on experiences in their learning environment. Now, with computer software like MATLAB adopted as a necessary tool for analysis and simulations, students are motivated in the DSP course and their learning efficiency has been enhanced greatly. Today, a DSP task such as digital filter design using MATLAB can be completed in minutes. Hence, there is room for course improvement; that is, the time saved could be allocated to practical real-time DSP to further motivate and attract our hands-on technology students. With this consideration, we enhance our DSP course by adding real-time DSP labs. Each developed lab requires both MATLAB simulations and real-time DSP using a floating-point digital signal processor, TX320TMS67C13 DSK. In addition, students are required to develop comprehensive real-time DSP projects and demonstrate their working projects in class. We will outline our course learning outcomes and DSP laboratories with both MATLAB simulations and hands-on real-time DSP. Then, we will focus on describing real-time DSP pedagogies for our laboratory implementations. We will also examine the course assessment according to our collected data from course evaluation, student surveys and student course work, and finally we will address improvement of the course based on our assessment.