PURPOSE The Center is the focus for research, development and deployment of methodologies, techniques and courseware for the enhancement of electrical and computer engineering education.

OBJECTIVES Engagement of faculty in education enhancement activity; Development of tools to enable minimization of overhead effort and maximization of intellectual/professional engagement in teaching, for both in class and remote delivery; Development of products of research for commercial deployment (multi-media integration, etc.).

OPERATION The Center will be under the direction of the holder of the Arbutus Chair and GRA Eminent Scholar in Education. The funds generated by the Arbutus endowment and the associated endowment will be utilized by the Arbutus chair to support the Center.

BACKGROUND Over the past five years there has been a developing educational research effort within the School of ECE. Approximately 66 ECE faculty have been involved in enhancing educational delivery at the undergraduate level, the graduate level, and the continuous learning post graduate level. At the undergraduate level, students in 2025: Introduction to Signal Processing, 2030: Introduction to Computer Engineering, 2031: Digital Design Lab, 2040: Circuit Analysis, 3025: Electromagnetics and other core curriculum classes are benefiting from the innovative teaching methods and delivery of these courses and labs by the faculty involved. At the graduate level, courses in DSP, telecommunications, analog electronics, optics, radar and networking have been developed and delivered for the on-line masters program. Post college applications include the development and implementation of the course “DSP for Practicing Engineers” specifically for Texas Instruments.

The development of new practices in educational delivery and the enabling technology brings forward the opportunity to create and commercialize products in an area that has not been tapped, thus generating an engine for economic growth. Through the effort many tools have been developed and commercialized for industry and education. inFusion, which also has commercial applications, is provided free of charge for other universities and can be downloaded off of the Internet. To date, 100 universities have taken advantage of this opportunity. This product allows professors to create presentations from the office, home, classroom or studio using web-viewable graphics with low equipment requirements. The lecture material can be packaged as a coherent online presentation quickly and easily. To take this process one step further, Course Builder enables professors to build these lectures into modules with automatic and audio-video indexing through FastTalk. FastTalk is a prime example of a tool developed by an ECE faculty member that can impact both the educational and industrial environment