Discovery Learning with Case Studies for Undergraduates Electromagnetics

电气工程专业的学生很难想象和理解三维矢量值电场和磁场的抽象和复杂性质。因此，这个项目的目标是为一个本科生电磁学实验室获得仪器，该实验室将被整合到一个为期两个学期的电磁学课程序列中，并被整合到高级天线和微波理论课程中。这个项目的总体教学目标是利用设备开发一套实验，为本科生的电磁学相关教学提供发现学习和案例研究方法。每个实验都将预先选定和预先定义，以阐明物理定律或概念(即“案例”)，并将在实验室手册中概述这些实验。这些课程的学生将被分成小组，每组在本学期进行一项实验。这些实验还将被设计用来教授课堂上没有讨论过的概念，这样学生就有机会作为一个团队，独立于教师之外学习和发现材料。然后，该小组将准备一场讲座，向其他学生介绍他们的发现和其他概念，并演示他们的实验。在这节课中将有讨论和问题来完成“案例研究”的方法，实验室将允许学生使用专用的实验仪器和最先进的仪器来发现和分析电磁场和相关现象，并与分析理论进行比较。这为学生提供了一个学习、互动、形象化和完全理解与电磁理论相关的抽象概念的绝佳机会。这些实验是为电气工程专业的大三和大四学生设计的，将在10年期间影响大约1500名学生，估计大部分设备的使用寿命。

Students in Electrical Engineering have a difficult time visualizing and understanding the abstract and complicated nature of three-dimensional, vector-valued electric and magnetic fields. Thus, the objective of this project is to obtain instrumentation for an undergraduate electromagnetics laboratory that will be integrated into a two-semester electromagnetics course sequence and into senior-level Antennas and Microwave Theory courses. The overall pedagogical goal of this project is to use the equipment to develop a set of experiments that will provide a discovery learning and case study approach to undergraduate electromagnetics-related instruction. Each experiment will be preselected and predefined to illustrate a physical law or concept (i.e. the "case") and the experiments will be outlined in a laboratory manual. The students in these courses will be divided into groups and each group will perform one experiment during the semester. The experiments will also be designed to teach concepts that were not discussed in the class- room so the students have an opportunity to learn and discover material as a team and independently of the instructor. That group will then prepare a lecture to present their findings and the additional concepts to the other students and to demonstrate their experiment. There will be discussions and questions during this session to complete the "case-study" approach The laboratory will allow the students to use dedicated experimental apparatus and state-of-the-art instrumentation to discover and analyze electromagnetic fields and related phenomena and compare with the analytical theory. This provides an excellent opportunity or the students to learn, interact, visualize and completely understand the abstract concepts associated with electromagnetic theory. These experiments re intended for junior and senior Electrical Engineering majors and will affect approximately 1,500 students over the course of 10 years, an estimated lifetime of a majority of the equipment.