Richard Baraniuk, ECE Department, Rice University
Jim Cahow, National Instruments

Connexions®: An Industry/Academic Collaboration for
Open-Access Education

There is a crisis in engineering education today, with decreasing enrollments, less engaged and less prepared students, and pressure to cover increasing amounts of material. Curricula are becoming increasingly stove-piped and disconnected, even though research indicates that the study of science and engineering is more meaningful when connected to other fields. Moreover, a leading complaint from industry regarding new engineering graduates is their lack of experience and skills with collaboration and teamwork as well as hands-on design.

This presentation provides an overview of the successful and growing industrial/academic partnership between National Instruments and Rice University's Connexions Project. Our common vision is to to prepare the scientific and engineering leaders of tomorrow by breaking away from traditional textbook and lecturebased education, moving toward a new framework where communities of educators, students, and field practitioners continually interact, collaborate, connect, and explore active content. NI's LabVIEW is a personal computer-based DSP system for interactively visualizing, processing, and interacting with rich multimedia such as audio, images, and video from a wide range of applications. Connexions® is an open-access repository of free scholarly materials and an open-source software toolkit that helps authors publish and collaborate, instructors rapidly build and share custom courses, and learners explore the links among concepts, courses, and disciplines.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
3:00p.m. - Duncan Hall McMurtry
Rice University

ECE Affiliates Meeting - Afternoon Session



Last modified: September 26, 2005