Experience-based Approach for Teaching and Learning Concepts in Digital Signal Processing

This paper focuses on the use of daily real-life experiences to explain concepts in Digital Signal Processing (DSP). These concepts are presented in an intuitive and engaging manner through the use of visual examples, stories, interactive activities, animations, and puzzles. The paper focuses on the concept of sampling. Additional work on other DSP topics is ongoing. Students are often times overwhelmed with the equations used to explain concepts in electrical engineering. Although it is important and valuable to understand the mathematics behind these concepts, many students comprehend ideas more effectively (at least initially) when presented with examples that relate to everyday life. DSP is clearly one topic that involves a great deal of mathematics. Unfortunately it is typically taught in a conventional lecture-focused theoretical manner, with a very few visual and intuitive examples. This paper shares examples using a multi-modal visual approach. It focuses on the teaching and learning of sampling including under sampling, over sampling, and multi-rate sampling. The emphasis of this approach is on introducing the material in a way that allows students to easily grasp concepts by providing many daily experience-based,, real-world examples, images (and stories), animations, experiments, games, and puzzles. Specific examples in the paper are related to experiences such as driving, talking over the mobile phone, and entertainment. In addition, STEM-based examples, e.g., from medicine and physics are presented. P ge 26717.2 We have assessed students’ response to the new way of learning, and received very positive feedback. In addition, in order to get a large set of examples, students have been given extra credit assignments that encourage them to explore and report on real-life topic-focused instances/activities. These assignments motivate students to think critically and also help them to better comprehend topics in DSP. It should be emphasized that the work is not meant to replace an existing DSP textbook. Instead it is designed to be used as material that supplements the learning of topics in signal processing.