AVR-Chat

On 12/28/07, Philippe Habib <phabib@well.com> wrote:
> I wish the problem only existed in other country's schools.  A few years ago
> I supervised a 3rd year engineering student intern from a school with a
> decent reputation and although he was a year away from graduating as a EE he
> had never held a soldering iron and couldn't build a simple cable to link 2
> serial devices.  I showed him how to solder and suggested he build some kits
> to get some of the hands on experience any employer would likely expect from
> him in a year.

I was a TA for a Senior engineering course (also open to postgraduate)
in a top 50 university in the US. It is in a nice place of California. In the
first class, I wanted to check their basic knowledge of using the equipment
(power supply, fuctional generator and oscilloscope). I started with a simple
question. I asked them to connect the HP power supply (dual 25V supply)
to get 30V. Half of the students did not know how to do that. That was a big
supprise for me. Most of them had never done any soldering and that was
expected by me anyway. But since I was a good TA, I was able to teach
them soldering and basic use of the lab equipment. All of them are able
to finish the project (a Boost converter using SG3524). So they were not
that bad after all. They just need proper guidance and proper training.

Still I can see that a lot of them do not have the basic secondary school
level of math capability without the use of calculator. Anyway, calculator
is everywhere so that is not a big problem.

> Beyond the failure of the school to let him get that far with no real hands
> on lab work, I wonder what made this kid decide he wanted to be a EE if he
> had never even had the interest to do any of it.

This is a bigger problem than not knowing how to solder properly.

Xiaofan