[sevensor]

My biggest criticism of EE pedagogy is that it tends to proceed from abstractions and then derive the whole world. This makes it a bit of a slog for a lot of students. I’d like to see an application-first approach that builds up principles from observed behavior. Like, measure the slip in an induction motor and then work out what’s going on there, instead of deriving motors from Maxwell’s equations.

[carlmr]

That's a good point, too, I had a bunch of abstractions without applications in my head.

[wetwater]

Its interestine, when you say abstractions. Could you explain what you mean by abstractions in this context and what do you mean by the underlying fundamentals.

[carlmr]

One example would be resonant circuits. Ok great you can build resonant circuits, but what for? The fundamentals to understand frequency responses came later in signals and systems. The application came much later when I learned about electric motors, which basically behave like low pass filters (resonant circuits) which enables us to use PWM to generate sine shaped current curves by switching the input voltage on and off. The voltage signal is smoothed by the LPF circuit that is the motors windings.

I think it would have helped me if we talked about the motor or other examples first, and then did some math to show how the resonant behavior can be useful.

[sevensor]

It’s crazy that VFDs work! You have to have a really good ground though, or you get arcing through the bearings.

[renox]

I remember having two class about networking, the first one was top down, it was awful, the second one was bottom up, everything clicked.

[imtringued]

Why is bottom up or top down needed? Why can't you just explain everything at a high level first and then get into the details?

[idiotsecant]

There isn't enough time. A leisurely exploration from observations is what you do on your own time. School has a certain amount of material to convey in a certain time. That means learn the axioms and rules as best you can and get to work paying off that enormous student loan.

[tekla]

Massive waste of time. So much happens in a way that is not intuitive nor easily observable that starting from the math is much better.

[bee_rider]

The blog post describes the problem with this strategy, I think—the author was already pulled over to the CS side because they could just throw together a web app that people could actually interact with, day one.

If you start with easy circuit models, at least the labs can put together something tangible in the first couple semesters, to keep people interested.

And, I mean, a lot of engineering students end up going into sort of technician-y jobs, so keeping the hands-on spark alive has a lot of value, IMO.

[sevensor]

So set your sights lower? A lot of BS EEs exit the process understanding neither Maxwell’s equations nor which end of a soldering iron to hold. The degree demonstrates that they are good at abstract symbol manipulation, and that’s not nothing, but it’s not very intellectually fulfilling and it filters out a lot of people who could be good engineers.

[korse]

Don't forget, Faraday hated math.

[ahartmetz]

Teaching solutions without even mentioning the problems, basically. I hate it.