ELEC 432

What are They?

In a typical lecture course, you get to practice what you have learned in homework problem sets, then demonstrate how well you have learned it on exams. Since a primary goal of this course is to enable you to design and build digital radio systems, it seems that the best way for you to practice is to go into the lab and work with the various system components. And as long as you're there, a good way to test your knowledge would be to ask questions about these components, how their performance does or doesn't correspond to what we expect, why we expect it, and other aspects of your classroom learning in the context of the work in the lab.

So, instead of homework and exams, we will have "Lab Exercises." Each of these will be focused on a particular lab project and will combine some of the aspects of a conventional lab report with a few related homework style questions, all in one convenient package. Because what can be done in a single lab of reasonable length is limited, a few of the questions may stray a bit from the central topic, in order to provide better coverage of the material.

The exact structure will vary from one exercise to another, but each will try to do one or more of the following:

  1. pose a problem to be solved
  2. pose questions to be answered
  3. involve analysis of a problem or system
  4. require measurement and interpretation of results
  5. illustrate and expand on topics covered in lectures
  6. introduce additional topics
  7. provide experience with tools and components to be used in the design project
  8. require design or design decisions
  9. require fabrication or assembly of modules
The specific work to be turned in will be described in the instructions for each exercise. In general this will be a brief description of what happened in the lab, along with answers to various questions posed before, during, and after the lab work itself. It may be word processed or handwritten, whichever you prefer, as long as it's legible, and gramatically correct. Note that although this is an Engineering, rather than an English, course, you will be expected to provide at least a basic narative structure to your answers. I.e. there should be sentences and the occasional paragraph interspersed among the equations, numbers, and drawings.