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All electrical and computer engineering majors at the University of Evansville are required to complete EE 380, a 2-hour projects course at the end of the junior year, prior to enrolling in the senior project sequence. This course requires that all students complete four open-ended projects, one of which must be a team project. The team project is typically completed by all of the students in the class in teams of 3 or 4 students each. The remaining three projects must be done on an individual basis and can be chosen from a list of projects in three different areas such as electronics, linear systems, digital systems, electromagnetics, software, etc. EE 380 meets once a week in a session where the instructor provides guidance and coordinates the course. The instructor is also available in the lab at arranged times to provide one-on-one assistance with a project. Students keep a notebook of their work on the projects and turn in a formal report documenting each project. Students must also present a demonstration of each final project to the instructor. As it is structured, this course provides a mechanism to assess ABET outcomes b, d, e, and h. In this paper, we present the logistics of the course, a sample of projects completed, and the course assessment for ABET outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a junior level software/hardware course for computer engineering majors, who have previously completed two programming classes (C and C++) and are concurrently taking classes in microcontrollers, programming languages, and linear systems. This course is taught as an inverted classroom and has no exams and no formal lecture. Each student is assigned seven projects, each of which has a two-week hard deadline. The first two projects are mostly software in order to teach C#, the primary language for the class. C# is new to the junior level students and lends itself to hardware/software interaction. All other projects include hardware or graphic output related to linear systems, electronics, or controls. The class meets for three fifty-minute periods a week. The instructor introduces a project, points to resources that are helpful in completing the project, and, in a few cases, may lecture briefly on unfamiliar concepts such as the Fourier transform in software, threading, graphics, etc. The instructor then answers questions, provides directions, and gives general help with the projects. Upon finishing each project, students turn in the complete project file including supporting documentation. Each project has a minimal list of specifications which, if fully met, will earn a grade of A-. The projects have a long list of extras, some of which must be completed for better grades. Some projects which have been completed in the past include: Blackjack (graphics, animation), sound files (the FFT, handling large amounts of data, and graphics), GPS location (hardware sensor, Google maps), network game such as Scrabble or network Battleship (socket programming), USB sensor (writing a DLL plus A/D interface), Windows phone app such as a calculator, embedded remote data collector using FEZ hardware and socket programming, and the traveling salesman problem (genetic programming). In this paper we present the course structure and grading process, a description of the projects, and assessment based upon student feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]