Project Based Introductory Electromagnetics Course Focused On Increasing Students’ Interest And Motivation

This paper discusses course material being designed under the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) grant # 0632842 “Developing Leadership and Innovation in Engineering Students Through Undergraduate Courses in Applied Electromagnetics Built Upon Novel Educational Concept” to specifically address the problem of students’ declining interest in electromagnetics (EM), while applications of EM continue to permeate many areas of electrical engineering both in the industry and academia. The new approach to teaching introductory course of EM aims to spark students’ interest to the subject via offering them several real-world problems. The project has its major emphasis on increasing students’ motivation for studying electromagnetics by re-developing the course flow. The educational concept being explored is based on breaking down the course into 4-5 lecture/lab mini-projects, each focused on a particular theme of interest to engineers and researchers nowadays. As part of this project, a senior capstone research on Wireless Electricity Transfer was implemented during 2007-08 by a computer engineering student. The paper will present the results of this and several other projects designed and developed under the NSF CCLI grant and discuss the students’ changing attitudes to electromagnetics.