Signal processing within an integrated teaching laboratory

An integrated teaching laboratory (ITL) is being built at the University of Colorado to provide interdisciplinary design and development experiences for engineering students beginning at the freshman level. The ITL will be fully operation in 1997 and will consist primarily of open space with portable lab stations that can be reconfigured to accommodate various types of experiments. Students from every discipline in the engineering college will work next to one another in the lab. The close proximity will foster interdisciplinary curiosity and cooperation, and encourage teamwork and creative problem-solving. The building is being designed with many sensors so that it can itself be part of experimentation that can range from environmental air analysis to water flow to electrical usage. This paper will specifically address the results of the pilot sections of the ITL First-Year Engineering Projects Course in which one section is focusing on speech processing in the design of systems that are controlled by speech