ECE Curriculum Committee Meeting Minutes for March 28, 2008

1. The Minutes of the February 29, 2008 meeting were approved.
2. ECE 398 Speech Technology by Richard Sproat was approved for Fall 2008 subject to area committee approval.
3. K.-C. Hsieh reported on developments related to ECE 440 and ECE 398 KC. He said that this semester, ECE 440 instructors are experimenting with a weekly quiz format, which necessarily involves some modest reduction in course material to accomodate. He stated that students' difficulties with ECE 440 may stem not so much from the difficulty of the material, but from inadequate mastery of expected fundamental background knowledge from prerequisite courses; he believes that the basic content of ECE 440 is sound and that better preparation and pedagogical changes such as the weekly quiz format may be sufficient to "fix" ECE 440.
4. The Committee reviewed the syllabus of ECE 442. We found the course content generally in accordance with expectations and our essential topics list, although some felt that the current organization of the material from the outline seemed a bit strange. There was a strong sense that ECE 442 and the related lab course ECE 443 should be very closely coupled, and that this may be a current problem. The Committee asked the Chair to invite course directors and key instructors to meet with us to discuss the 342/343 change.
5. The Committee adjourned at 11:58 AM.