Abstract-This paper presents an educational experience on how best engineering students can utilize their computers to tackle engineering problems. The study is matured from a long teaching experience of the Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering course required from all first year students majoring either in Computer and Communications Engineering (CCE) or in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the American University of Beirut (AUB). In addition to raising awareness of the engineering topics, the course focuses on the innovative approach of using software tools in considering real-life problem solutions in order to adopt them to new educational technology. This has been achieved by carefully designed experimental sessions where software tools are introduced with an objective of illustrating the technical and analytical computing environment such as Microsoft Office, PSPICE, and MATLAB. These tools are integrated, in this setting, for students to visualize programming environment in solving and documenting engineering problems. In addition the students are introduced to different information research tools to better enhance and support their problem solving skills by using proper referencing.Index Terms-Electrical engineering, introduction to engineering, LABVIEW, MATLAB, moodle, PSPICE, undergraduate engineering studies.
I. INTRODUCTIONFor so many years, the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the American University of Beirut introduced a new course to first year engineering students on Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Parts of the main objectives of this course were to introduce students to engineering profession and to some basic mathematical and computing tools used in electrical and computer engineering in addition to fostering communication and teamwork skills. The course contents and approaches have changed over the years based on continuous assessment and feedback obtained from senior students and faculty members.Many papers have been published on this topic including course objectives, content, teaching approach, and design project. The authors of [1], [2] addressed the need to introduce a similar course in an effort to help students in selecting a major as early as possible of their study and informing them of their educational programs and career opportunities.Others [3]-[5] addressed the need of introducing design projects at an early stage in engineering studies to help students to explore design alternatives, to learn design concepts, to solve facing challenges, and to communicate their design solutions. In other cases, the course is meant to strengthen the fundamental problem solving skills, highlight the various engineering disciplines, explore the different areas of electrical engineering with hands on approach, and prepare them to have ingenuity and creativity [6]- [8]. In other related publications, "teaching-in-context" approach is used [9] and others showed the positive backgrou...
