Contribution: This article defines "curricular hackathons" and describes the features, challenges, and opportunities of adopting the hackathon format into engineering curricula. It is based on experience implementing a series of curricular hackathons which provide students with formative design experiences as they address ill-structured…

Contribution: This article describes efforts to improve the teaching and learning process for the digital system design course using active learning (AL) approaches in the classroom and a parallel hands-on project designed based on constructive alignment (CA). Background: The digital systems design course is an important part of Undergraduate…

Contribution: The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in engineering higher education is becoming increasingly important nowadays. This article contributes to the Scholarship of Integration by providing a comprehensive review of current research on AI integration in engineering higher education and presenting a pilot AI introductory module…

Contribution: This paper analyzes reflective thinking within organizational structures in higher education and draws parallels between the challenges faced by educators developing interdisciplinary courses and their students working in ill-structured projects. Background: Interdisciplinarity as a learning goal is prevalent across engineering…

Medical imaging systems (MIS) constitute an important emergent subdiscipline of engineering studies. In the context of electrical and electronics engineering (EEE) education, MIS courses cover physics, instrumentation, data acquisition, image formation, modeling, and quality assessment of various modalities. Many well-structured MIS courses are…

The ongoing search for excellence in education requires the review and renewal of teaching strategies, concentrating efforts on courses that are not attractive to students or are considered to be unsuccessful. This paper is focused on an undergraduate power electronics course in which students had poor academic results in the past. The actions…

Teaching larger software engineering project courses at the end of a computing curriculum is a way for students to learn some aspects of real-world jobs in industry. Such courses, often referred to as capstone courses, are effective for learning how to apply the skills they have acquired in, for example, design, test, and configuration management.…

Project-based learning (PBL), a learning environment in which projects drive learning, has been successfully used in various courses in the educational programs of different disciplines. However, concerns have been raised as to the breadth of the content covered and, in particular, whether PBL can be applied to specialized subjects without…

This paper presents an advanced variant of learning programming by the use of the Internet and multimedia. It describes the development of a blended learning environment, which, in addition to classroom (face-to-face) lessons, introduces lessons delivered over the Internet: the use of multimedia teaching material with completely dynamic…

The rapid evolution of System-on-Chip (SoC) challenges academic curricula to keep pace with multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary system thinking. This paper presents a curricular prototype that cuts across artificial course boundaries and provides a meaningful exploration of diverse facets of SoC design. Specifically, experimental contents of a…

The creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) is promoting a change toward a new model of education focused on the student. It is impelling methodological innovation processes in many European universities, leading more teachers to apply methods based on active and cooperative learning in their classrooms. However, the successful…

This paper describes the goals, pedagogical system, and educational outcomes of a three-semester curriculum in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). The sequence takes engineering students with no formal MEMS training and gives them the skills to participate in cutting-edge MEMS research and development. The evolution of the curriculum from…

This paper describes how a new "Moodle" module, called "CTPracticals", is applied to the teaching of the practical content of a basic computer organization course. In the core of the module, an automatic verification engine enables it to process the VHDL designs automatically as they are submitted. Moreover, a straightforward…

Early exposure to embedded computing systems is crucial for students to be prepared for the embedded computing demands of today's world. However, exposure to systems knowledge often comes too late in the curriculum to stimulate students' interests and to provide a meaningful difference in how they direct their choice of electives for future…

During the last few years, the number of university students choosing to follow engineering degrees has decreased dramatically in Spain. For that reason, several university departments, in collaboration with some high schools, have developed a range of activities in order to promote a higher enrollment rate, to improve the level of mathematics and…