Incorporating software engineering principles into real time engineering courses

One common industrially pertinent area between electrical engineering and computer science encompasses digital data acquisition, signal processing, communication and control. Students need to be exposed to high-level software engineering practices that are engineering based. An already crowded computer engineering program curriculum cannot accommodate each of these courses separately. At Western Michigan University (WMU) a junior level course was created that teaches high-level software engineering best practices using Visual Basic that is applied to these areas. The students were required to maintain assignment logs, which provided a closed-loop feedback mechanism for continuous course quality improvement. This course is highly successful in that the students learn a great deal of information as well as gaining experience in applications that is useful in subsequent course work and careers.