Work in progress — Exploiting high-altitude ballooning as a framework of ECE Senior Design projects

Senior Design is a challenging course for both students and the instructor and/or faculty advisors. To design the course that can create enjoyable learning environment and be effective in addressing the ABET criteria for student outcomes, we have adopted a high-altitude weather ballooning as the framework of projects for Senior Design. It is envisioned that the new framework better develops students´ ability for teamwork and effective communication, as well as, encouraging them to apply appropriate technical knowledge acquired through their overall education in electrical and computer engineering. In this Work-in-Progress paper, we describe our approach to formulating design projects for a high-altitude weather ballooning system. From the progress so far, we have observed that the design of a complete weather ballooning system is suitable for 3 teams each of which consists of 3 or 4 students, and that further revisions and enhancements may be suitable for 1 or 2 teams of students in subsequent years.