Transcript A Generic Multiprocessor System

EDULEARN 2011
Pedagogical Innovations in Engineering
Education
South Africa
Presentation by:
Simon Winberg
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Cape Town
Software Defined Radio
Research Group
Cape
Town
2-Jul-2012
Reporting on a ‘Curriculum refinement’
process for an engineering degree course


Four-year BSc in
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Curriculum changes to accommodate:
Responsiveness
in terms of industry
needs
Responsibility
in terms of fundamentals,
Washington accord,
Engineering council

How can we accommodate our industry
partners’ needs while maintaining the
requirements for other stakeholders (i.e.,
degree certification requirements as set out
by the engineering council, etc.).
Q: What parts of the curriculum are
suitable for change to accommodate
industry needs?
Q: What parts can - or should - be left alone?

Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE)
Degree programme
◦ Offered by the Department of Electrical Engineering
at the University of Cape Town
◦ Follows more an electronics and special-purpose
computer systems design perspective (in contrast
to the computer science approach)
Integrates
Hardware
+
Software
Design
What jobs does the degree lead to? …
Digital computer circuit
design
Telecoms
Embedded system
& software design
Digital Signal
Processing
programming
Control system
design

Industry collaborators
3 South African companies
◦ 2x companies involved in development of specialpurpose high-end embedded systems & software
◦ 1x company involved in development of software
for high performance computing applications


Industry collaborators
Research collaborators:
2 South African research institutions
◦ Karoo Array Telescope Project (KAT): the South African
part of the international Square Kilometre Array project)
◦ Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
Collaborations In terms of
Software defined radio, radar,
use of hardware description
languages
For accommodating or industry partners’ needs

Carried out as a part of a larger curriculum
renewal project that concerns:
◦
◦
◦
◦
Updating courses to use up-to-date tools
Reducing duplication between courses
Re-evaluating service courses used and provided
Time line mid-2009  Dec 2014
the process …
1. Data gathering
Meetings, telephone,
email archive
Refinement &
Trade-offs
2. Analysing the data
Making lists of points
requested, identifying
commonalities,
prioritizing items,
negotiating trade-offs
3. Refining the curriculum
Identify main courses to make
changes to. Discuss curriculum
requests with lecturer(s)
involved. Report back to
the partners.
Types of knowledge related to most of collaborators’ requests
following approach described by Henson (2006)
Level 3
Level 5
Desired graduate
qualities
(effective/valuing)
Techniques grads
Application contexts
Should learn (cognitive/
& problems
comprehension)
(cognitive/application)
Types of systems /
projects students should do
(cognitive/application)
Important professional
qualities
(affective / organizing)
Henson’s Knowledge domain / knowledge
level in parentheses

All collaborators agreed that the fundamental
‘core knowledge’ of the computer engineering
discipline needs to be ‘protected’ – regardless
of immediate industry/technology needs
“… Typically, candidates are chosen not f
or experience in any single technology or environment, but
for a strong grounding in the fundamental concepts”
(ind. collaborator 1)


Commonly discussed:
Professional values & the
underpinning of professional expertise
Difficult to explain in clear terms – generally
discussed as largely tacit qualities that a
professional develops over time (‘a professional
knows how to behave professionally’)
“… taking responsibility …” (ind. collaborator 5)
“… able to do time-planning, Gantt charts, budgets…”
(res. collaborator 3)


Incorporate problem-solving for particular
application contexts – train students to use
relevant tools for these contexts
Including simulated work conditions: e.g.
reviewing designs, decision marking,
leadership, design critique and peer
assessment
“… taking responsibility …” (ind. collaborator 5)
Assessing students’ assessment ability


A collection of specific tools and techniques
were identified from the collaboration
Both industry & research partners
recommended against specific training – they
qualified requests with alternate approaches
“Our products are built with java…and a tomcat server. …
Embedded coding in java is obviously not essential in the
course, mastering embedded programming in C would be
effective also.” (ind. collaborator 4)


breadth of know-
depth of disciplinary knowledge

Implementing curriculum changes…
Collaborators generally want graduates with
experience and skills that can be applied in a
broad application contexts using a variety of
tools
Towards:
ledge & flexibility
‘T-shaped’ graduates *
* Rip 2004




SKA meerKAT (Karoo Array Telescope) project for
SDRRG and RHINO funding
Xilinx for donations & support of RHINO project
Texas Instruments for donation of development
resources and hardware
SDRG team: thanks to Prof. Inggs, Dr. Langman,
Dr. Mishra, and the SDRG students





Rip, A., 2004, "Strategic research, post-modern universities and
research training," Higher Education Policy, 17, pp. 153-166.
Shackelford, R., McGettrick, A., Sloan, R., Topi, H., Davies, G.,
Kamali, R., Cross, J., Impagliazzo, J., LeBlanc, R., and Lunt, B.,
2006, "Computing curricula 2005: The overview report," ACM
SIGCSE Bulletin, 38(1), pp. 456-457.
2002, "Agents for change: Bringing industry and academia
together to develop career opportunities for young researchers.
Policy Briefing 17, European Science Foundation, Stockholm
(Sweden).
ACM, 2004, "Computer Engineering 2004 - Curriculum
Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Computer
Engineering," Association for Computing Machinery.
Henson, K. T., 2006, Curriculum planning: Integrating
multiculturalism, constructivism, and education reform,
Waveland Pr Inc.