Alternatives in teaching system-building skills

Industry is increasing its requirements on skills that are hard to acquire in the classroom. These skills are required in realizing large microelectronics systems, often on a single chip. The expertise in many subject areas, such as analog design, communication systems and system software has to be combined in such systems. While the classroom experience in most of these areas is sufficient by itself, skills in teamwork, design team planning and in carrying out realistic-size projects can only be obtained through project-centered courses and programs. In this paper, three types of programs used for developing these skills are compared. While the large-scale, industrial-type projects supervised by several professors require most resources, their results are the best. Individual projects, taken at the undergraduate level, are much more modest in their goals and resources. Courses with heavy emphasis on the laboratory project present a well-balanced compromise in the resources and the course goals. The organization of such programs is discussed in this paper