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For the last five years we have been offering our electrical engineering (EE) program to students throughout the state using streaming video lectures and local lab offerings facilitated by traveling lab managers. Much of that time has been spent improving different aspects of our courses such as online office hours, web-based content, distance lab offerings, and online assessment of student work. Although the asynchronous lecture approach provides increased access for working students who are completing the program on a part-time basis, it poses a number of instructional challenges. This paper discusses several ongoing pilot studies which investigate the effectiveness of auxiliary techniques that supplement the instruction for both the local and distance students who are enrolled in these classes. These studies use technology to expand the resources available to the student. One study uses mini-videos and quizzes to address review material, reading assignments, and lab equipment training. Another looks at the use of flipping the classroom to make room for in-class problem solving. A third project uses pre-homework assignments and online quizzing with incremental feedback to promote student self-directed learning and improve student confidence. Student survey data, relative student performance, and faculty workload will all be discussed. Background In the fall of 2008 the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville began a collaborative distance education program where place-bound students could complete their entire four-year electrical engineering (EE) degree from any of the university system's two-year college sites located throughout the state. Once students have successfully completed their core pre-engineering courses they apply for electrical engineering major status at our university. After matriculating into the EE program, they concurrently take courses to satisfy their Associate's Degree program at their local two-year school and their Bachelor's Degree program in electrical engineering. Since the inception of the statewide collaborative program we have been continually adapting the program to meet the needs of distance students. Initially we tried to adapt our traditional core EE courses for a non-traditional distance student audience. 1,2 Distance labs were facilitated by traveling lab managers. 3 The managers can travel to up to 13 different sites throughout the state and typically assist with labs for 5 to 7 courses each. Some of the courses required more lab work than others. On average the lab managers were travelling three days per week and on each

An initial series of comparisons are made between finite element computations and laboratory measurements obtained during heterogeneous phantom heating with the Sigma 60 applicator. The phantom is a relatively complex, though still idealized, rendering of the pelvic area which has been used to study the deep heating characteristics of the Sigma 60 in this anatomy. Direct electric field measurements as well as inferred SAR through transient temperature analysis are plotted against computed results along 11 one-dimensional tracks through the phantom. Quantitative comparisons provided through the track-by-track analysis show generally good agreement between computation and measurement. The finite element method is found to predict well the jumps in the electric field when polarized perpendicularly to a muscle/fat interface. Visualizations of the complete three-dimensional distributions are also highlighted and correlate well with physical reasoning about the expected behaviour of the fields produced. Some discrepancies in the data persist and are discussed and analysed in depth. They underscore the difficulties that can arise in performing comparisons between measured and computed results and stress the need for careful and thorough investigations when attempting these types of model validation studies.