Using a digital recording machine as the main thread in a project based electrical engineering curriculum

Today students often experience the engineering curriculum as a noncoherent education with a number of courses without connection. In our electrical engineering curriculum we address this problem by using a digital recording machine as a central theme that forms the main thread through all three years of the curriculum. The digital recording machine is introduced at the beginning of the students first year in an introductory project, where the students have to analyze the functionality of the machine from a black box perspective. This project has two main goals, (1) the students should learn how to work in a project, since a large part of our education is based on projects, and (2) they should develop a good understanding of the functionality of the digital recording machine, since it is used as a main theme throughout our curriculum. The students will build the analog parts of the machine during their analog electronics education in the first year and the digital parts during their digital education in the second year. Finally, the students, who choose the embedded systems program as their specialization profile in the third year will implement and manufacture the digital recording machine as a real product in cooperation with local industry. Starting in 1996 we have now used this concept with the digital recording machine as a recurring theme with good experiences for more than four years