Structure

EG1004 Structure

The course consists of a weekly three-hour lab, a two-hour recitation, and a one-hour lecture. A supervising faculty member, a team of TAs, and a writing consultant manage each section.

There will be common lecture for all the EG1004 sections each week. The lectures are delivered by Polytechnic faculty or outside experts discussing topics of general interest in engineering and technical work in general. To help you fully appreciate the lecture, and be able to pay attentiona to the speaker, we will distribute handouts of the speaker's slides after each lecture.

Two laboratory TAs supervise all lab work. The three-hour weekly lab begins with a five munute quiz based on the lab manual. You are expected to be fully familiar with the lab and what is required of you before you arrive at the lab, and the quizzes are a way to insure that you're ready to participate in the lab. After the quiz, your TA will proceed with a prepared briefing (usually a PowerPoint presentation). You will then perform the required lab work in teams following the guidelines in this manual and the instruction provided by your TA. After the lab, you will be preparing a lab report and a presentation. The lab TAs grade your lab reports for technial content, and your writing consultant will grade your lab report for style and use of the English language. You will be doing ten labs during the term, three of which will be design competitions. Your lab section will typically consist of up to nine teams of two students each, for a total of eighteen students per section. You will be assigned a team partner on a rotating basis, following industry practice where engineers and scientists are formed into large teams based on availability and technical expertise. Sometimes you might not like your teammmate, but like industry you will both be expected to put your personal feelings aside and operate as an effective team.

Your supervising faculty member, writing consultant, and Rectitation TA will run your two-hour weekly recitation. The supervising faculty member will be in charge of this session. Your team will prepare a PowerPoint presentation describing the laboratory experiment, which you will deliver as a team in front of the class. The instruction team will provide pointed criticism so that the entire class will be able to improve their skills. Periodically during the term, your project team will also present information about your semester long design project.

The writing consultants (one per section) attend the recitation each week. In addition to grading your lab reports and being part of the team commenting on your presentation, they will present a 10-minute mini-lesson about how to write correctly and presuasively.

Finally, there is a semester-long design project that runs in parallel with the other activities in the course. The projects will be described at your first recitation. It's early in the term, and you won't know much of the technical detail required to complete the project, so it's best to chosse a project that you find interesting. You'll get the tools needed to successfully complete the project as the term progresses. Typical projects are robots that overcome challenges, automatic routing using digital logic, and building construction. There is enough variety in the projects that everybody will find something interesting. At a later class you'll then be asked to choose a project you find interesting, freuqently with a second choce. Based on the preferences of the class, you'll then be formed into project teams. These teams have no relation to the lab teams discussed earlier. You will work with the same project partner for the rest of the term. Like the lab teams, you will be assigned to a team and will not be able to just work with your friends. The project will involve technical work, plus the skills needed to manage a project successfully, including setting and managing to a schedule, and setting and maintaining a cost. You'll be giving several "milestone" presenations during the term, where you will report your technical progress, and also how you are doing on cost and schedule issues. The last lab session is typically reserved for your final project presentation. This presentation serves two purposes. First, it is the final "milestone" project describing how yo uended up. Second, it is a marketing presentation explaining why a customer should want to buy your product instead of your competition's. Again, this is an important skill to learn. If a technical professional can't persuade a customer to buy their projduct they will go out of business, even if they have a superior technical solution.

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