Analog-Circuit-Based Activities to Improve Introductory Continuous-Time Signals and Systems Courses

The introductory continuous-time signals and systems course (CTSS) is one of the most difficult courses that students encounter in an electrical and computer engineering (ECE) curriculum, as evidenced by well-above-average drop/failure rates. This paper presents a series of analog-circuit based activities that can help students visualize the complex mathematical concepts and gain a better appreciation for how the concepts are useful in real-world situations. These exercises have been used in an introductory CTSS course since September of 2010. While the exercises were designed to be done in a three-hour session, we show how they can be broken up into smaller steps that could be completed easily in a one-hour class either by the students or as a demonstration by the professor. In order to get some measure of the impact of these exercises, the students were surveyed for one year before and also since the exercises were introduced. The results from this survey and also the Continuous-Time Signals and Systems Concept Inventory are presented as a measure of the impact of these exercises on the students’ affective and cognitive learning experience.