Integration of Virtual Instrumentation into a Compressed Electricity and Electronic Curriculum
PrintProceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition
Copyright ©, American Society for Engineering Education. Reprinted with the permission of ASEE.
Background
Ohio Northern University Technological Studies Department has a Technology Program that offers Industrial Technology curriculum under its Industry Track. Students in this track, take only two technology courses (TECH 261: Fundamentals of Electricity and Electronics, TECH 362: Digital Electronics: Concepts and Applications) relating to electricity and electronics before taking higher-level courses with automation and robotics emphasis. The curriculum is very compressed and it is a challenge for the instructor to establish a healthy
and balanced base of theory and practice. Previously the department owned out-dated electronics workstations (experimenters) and a simulation package that was not current and suitable for integration with hardware. Since practice is an important part of the program just like any other technology program, laboratory activities took a good portion of the two courses mentioned above. There was
limited time available for simulation, hence the students lacked computerized design and analysis skills. This paper elaborates on the efforts of improving the quality of electricity and electronics education with the help of simulation and virtual instrumentation tools. The author obtained 9 NI (National Instruments) ELVIS (Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite) workstations seen in Figure.1 to be utilized in both courses for a maximum number of 18-student laboratory sessions. Each workstation has a prototype board, variable power supply, function generator, physical digital multi-meter (DMM) and oscilloscope interface, and communicates with a PC through a data acquisition board (PCI
card). The power supply and function generator can be controlled manually or by
corresponding virtual (software) instruments in PC environment. Other virtual instruments available include DMM, oscilloscope (shown in Figure.2), Bode analyzer, dynamic signal analyzer, arbitrary waveform generator, digital bus reader and writer, impedance analyzer, and two- and three-wire current-voltage analyzers. During the acquisition of this hardware, a major design, simulation, and data acquisition software (NI LabView) was obtained as well.
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