Distance Learning Opportunities For Electronic Engineering Technology Graduates Of Community Colleges

A growing pool of graduates from the two-year community college technology programs has become aware of the need for expanded knowledge and the B.S. degree to enhance their professional opportunities. Unfortunately, many of these graduates are working and are isolated by distance from the limited number of universities that provide the B.S. degree in Technology and by the times they can attend classes. Distance learning provides a solution to this challenge, but creates the dilemma associated with teaching lab-intensive courses off campus. It is too expensive to buy equipment that is used irregularly; yet it is too cumbersome to haul the equipment back and forth. One solution to teaching electronic lab-intensive courses is National Instruments’ NI ELVIS (Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite) which integrates both hardware and software to shrink the workspace to only two elements: the experiment interface and a computer. All the traditional instruments (DMM, function generator, oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer) are now software. In addition, specialized instruments such as a transistor curve tracer, programmable power supplies, vector impedance meter, arbitrary waveform analyzer, 8-bit digital bus drivers are included in the suite of software instruments. Both hardware and software are completely open so innovation at the experiment, interfacing, or software level can flourish.