NEW CURRICULUM FOR THE ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING COURSE AT THE SÃO CARLOS ENGINEERING SCHOOL, SÃO PAULO UNIVERSITY (EESC-USP)

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the curricular revision taking place in the Electrical Engineering Course at EESC-USP. Firstly it is presented, in general lines the kind of engineer that is to be formed. Secondly it is presented the reasons for the curricular revision and the targets to be achieved with the new curriculum. Finally, the proposed curricular structure is presented. Three aims were to be achieved with the knew curricular structure: reduction of the whole credit load without compromising the quality of the course, transference of disciplines of electrical engineering towards the earlier part of the course, and flexibility in the structure of the course that can be easily modified according to new scientific and technological requirements.

This paper describes the curricular revision of the Electrical Engineering Course which is in progress at EESC-USP. It was brought about after exhaustive debates among the departmental staffs and with the contribution of other University educators performed through talks and consultancies. This process pointed out the deficiencies of the present curriculum as well as the needs and challenges found in preparing electrical engineers for the next years.

Some ideas are raised below that indicate the panorama of the concerns of the future engineer and, in consequence, affects the definition of the kind of education we believe they need to receive:

1. A sustained economic development requires technological capacity.
2. Technological development becomes more and more close and in smaller lapses of time to scientific advancement.
3. Today scientific research and technological production involve a great amount of human and material resources. This situation leads to an increasing interaction between Institutions on a national and international scale.
4. Technological innovations and products compete on a world wide scale, which requires, at least, creativity and quality.
5. Informatics facilitates faster and faster and on a broad global scale information exchange.
6. Ecological conceptions brings stronger concerns over limitations of natural resources of raw materials and sources of energy, and over environmental deterioration, and its drastic consequencies for human life.

These observations show the importance of well qualified human resources in the areas of science and engineering. On these bases we place the needs and challenges of preparing electrical engineers in our Institution, considering its actual scientific and educational capabilities.

INSTITUTION

The USP Campus in São Carlos is constituted of four Institutes: the Engineering School, the Physics Institute, the Chemistry Institute and the Insitute of Mathematics. Engineering School is composed of eight Departments: Hydraulic and Sanitary, Transportation, Geology, Structure, Architecture Departments, and the Departments of Materials Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering. The Engineering School also has a Computer Center and a Center of Technology for Education in Engineering.

The Electrical Engineering Department offers undergraduate and graduate courses. It has 32 full time staff devoted themselves to research and teaching; an average of 250 undergraduate students and 80 graduate students, and offers about 62 disciplines at undergraduate level as well as 47 disciplines at graduate level.

The actual curricular structure

The Electrical Engineering Department started its activities in 1970. At that time, emphasis was placed on electrical machines, power electrical systems and residention and industrial elctrical installation design (which together will be from now on called the area of Electrotechnique). During the 1980s, as new researchers were admitted and new lines of research were established, electronics gained importance in the Department. Sub-areas were defined in control, telecommunication, analog electronics and digital electronics. New specialities were proposed and new disciplines were introduced, but without a global curricular evaluation. Introduction of new disciplines and the exclusion of others without planning made the curriculum confused, with a very high credit hour charge and superposition of topics in different disciplines. Therefore, the actual curriculum possesses serious deformations due to inadequate tentatives at updating, leading the students to lose site of whole and, at same time, of the particularities of their professional formation. At the beginning of the 1990s a debate was begun in the Electrical Engineering Department for the purpose of redesigning the Electrical Engineering Curriculum.

Targets

Brazilian Engineering Schools obey a legislation of 1976 set up by the Federal Education Council which dictates the contents and minimum credit charge of each university course. São Paulo University manages those legal norms through hierarchically distribuited Committees with Course Coordinator Committees (CoCs) at basic levels.

The curricular structure of the Electrical Engineering course of EESC-USP is determined by CoC- Electrical Engineering (CoC-EE). This Committee is liable for any change in curriculum form and contents, as well as for the evaluation of the results achieved by changes. The Committee is bound to the suggestion of any wide alterations on the curricular structure on basis of the study of new tendencies which are necessary in preparing the future Electrical Engineer. It is constituted by teachers of other faculties and departments involved in the Electrical Engineering Course together with a majority of members of the Electrical Engineering Department. This composition allows a broad and multidisciplinary view of the most significant aspects of the Electrical Engineering Course.

The studies performed by the CoC-EE to rebuild the Electrical Engineering curriculum were developed with the commitment of conferring the profile of the future Electrical Engineer the following characteristics: a strong scientific base, a creative mind, ability to absorb and generate new technologies and knowledge, and capability to act in different areas of Electrical Engineering, and to respond to circumstantial changes in work opportunities.

The main difficulty related to the proposed curricular revision was centered on the definition of routes which would lead to the expected profile of the new engineer. Two streams of ideas were present during the discussions: one believing in narrow specialization and the other, generalistic, believing in a very broad but less deep approach in term of specialization. After debates and analysis, a curriculum was worked out based on a different point of view.

It was given the form of a structure composed of two major parts. The first one leads the student to a general formation in electrical engineering, trough a rigid body of disciplines and a large amount of topics in several branches of electrical engineering. The second one is related to specializations and has a very flexible form. It permits a high degree of individualized studies, and, under supervision, gives the student the opportunity to choose the kind and the degree of specialization he judges better for his career expectations.

To reach such conditions and from the diagnosis of the current curriculum, the following measures to be taken were defined for the structural revision:

• reduction in the number of classroom hours of expositive disciplines;
• anticipation of those basic disciplines which treat the foundations of electrical engineering towards the earlier periods of the course;
• revision of the contents and its distributions of the disciplines;
• establishment of the minimum necessary structure of the general formation;
• the organization of the contents and disciplines of the last part of the course conferring coherence and flexibility, richness of options and easy adaptation to technological changes.

The proposed curriculum reduces the barriers between the two traditional areas of electrical engineering, that are Electrotechnique and Electronics. In this sense it embraces a large amount of contents from both fields as necessary for the student to complete the full curriculum of electrical engineering and enlarges the horizons of his professional activities. However, he has to make a choice and attend a set of compulsory disciplines in one of these two areas after which he has to complete a minimum number of credits attending a free choice sub-set of disciplines among a major area related set of disciplines. With that the student can take his degree, but he may still attend other complementary disciplines to deepen his knowledge in a paticular specialization or enlarge it by means of free choice disciplines.

The several formative stages are characterized by the following set of disciplines:

• disciplines for full qualification;
• complementary disciplines;
• elective disciplines;
• free choice disciplines.

In the following sections are presented the composition of each one of these sets. Tables in the appendixes shown the complete curricular structure.

Full qualification disciplines

These disciplines provide the central core of knowledge of the new curricular structure, essential for preparing the future Electrical Engineer in the two large areas: Electrotechnique and Electronics. Their contents gives students a solid scientific, mathematical basis, engineering fundamental knowledge, basic computation tools, management, and economic skills, and an insight into ecology, humanistic and social science. This is the common nucleus of the two major specialities and is planned to reduce the boundaries between Electrotechnique and Electronics. It embraces disciplines such as electric circuits and systems, electromagnetic fields, physical electronics, electrical materials and processes, basic analog and digital electronics, power electronics, electrical and electronics measurements, motion control, basic communication circuits and systems, introduction to power systems, residential and industrial electrical installation design, electric machine modelling, etc, which gives a broad and solid foundation for the future engineer.

Complementary disciplines

The objectives of these sets of disciplines is to provide the knowledge for specialization in one of the two large areas of Electrotechnique and Electronics. Table 2 and 3, in the appendix, show the disciplines and their number of credits and the periods, in which they are presented. However the student must still complete an extra number of credits of selective disciplines to graduate.

Elective disciplines

Selective disciplines complete the curricular structure for the student graduates, as was said above. However, the approach is not the same for the area of Electronics and the area of Electrotechnique.

The area of Electrotechnique does not specify narrower specializations although emphasis is given in power systems. The student must complete a determined number of credits in this set of disciplines chosen with relative freedom, according to prerequisites. Table 4 shows the disciplines of this set and the corresponding number of credits.

On the other hand, the area of Electronics offers here a large set disciplines and the student may follow two directions. He can follow a narrower specialization of his choice completing a number of credits in a sub-set of disciplines selected as his preference but under supervision.

Once these requirements have been completed, the student graduates with specialization in Electronics and the special studies of his choice. Otherwise, he may complete an established number of credits in disciplines of different sub-sets, also under supervision and obeying prerequisites. In this case, once completed these requirements the student graduates with the specialization in Electronics without references to special studies.

Free choice disciplines

Disciplines of this type are intended to give students the knowledge of other areas, in a free choice base as, for example, social sciences, arts, etc, or even of electrical engineering, in those topics not previously selected for him to attend.

For the specialization in the area of Electrotchnique, he is obliged to complete a certain number of credits in disciplines of this type to graduate. For the specialization in the area of Electronics he is not obliged to complete any credit of this type to graduate.

DISCUSSION

The new curriculum is to be implanted gradually. The first period started in the first semester of this year and during the next five years two curricular structures will be managed simultaneously. Due to limited staff, some difficulties are expected. Part of this problem has been equated by using a table of equivalent disciplines elaborated from both curricular structures.Also, teachers have been asked to reorganize their disciplines for the curriculum being substituted, as well as their methodologies, to take in consideration the characteristics of the new structure with the purpose of producing maximal intersection between them.

Three consequences are expected: a) new methodologies of teaching and learning will be tested in disciplines of both structures; b) discipline equivalencies will optimize the efforts of the departmental staff during the implantation period of the new curricular structure; c) students enrolled in old curricular structure will be benefitted by the advantages of the new curricular structure always as is possible.

Parallelism between the contents of some disciplines transferred to earlier periods of the course is to be constrained in terms of corequisites. Some benefic changes are expected in methodological approachs through a better interaction between basic subjects and contents of disciplines which use the, for example (see Table 1), the Electrical Circuits I, Physics III (Electricity and Magnetism) and Ordinary Differential Equations will be taught simultaneously in the third period, and their contents are inter-related. So, concurrent learning and teaching must be considered.

The new curricular structure being implanted is expected to promote a closer linkage between science and mathmatics and engineering subjects. We think the use of computational tools for the teaching of mathematics, and the introduction of physics and physical electronics laboratories will facilitates the student to gain insight in engineering problems at the same time giving him strong fundamental knowledge. Increased amount of material in the signal and systems subjects and a increased amount of covarage of discrete-time systems are now required.

The new curricular structure implantation is also concerned with the usage of modern design techniques and computer aided design tools as well as with the ability to design and evaluate design in latter stages of the course.

A problem ever present to some degree in engineering teaching is the excessive academicism in the approach of the discipline subjects due to involvement of the departmental staff with research. This can bring some distortion to the student qualification. To attenuate this problem a "training" program in industries are being planned.

The implementation of this new structure will be supervised by the CoC-EE and the next step is the creation of evaluation mechanisms. Some difficulties are appearing due the lack of experiences on these matters. This will always be a great challenge.

CONCLUSION

The new curricular structure that is being implanted in the Electrical Engineering Course of EESC-USP is briefly described. A curriculum with a strong nucleus and at the same time with a great amount of flexibility is proposed. The traditional sequential form of presentation of the course subjects is broken and a concurrent methodology is adopted. Efforts are spent to present modern technology and yet continue to emphasize engineering, mathematics and science fundamentals. It intends to shape a profile of the Electrical Engineer that has a great scientific and technological foundation and enough adaptability to face the challenges of actual and future technological era.

The success of the intended objectives will be related to a greater engagement of the teachers/researchers in creating and planning new teaching and learning projects and methodologies. Limited human and financial resources are always a great problem, mainly considering the grade of our developing Country with other urgent social difficulties to be solved. Creativity must be used to confront these challenges. In this aspect, encouragement programs like REENGE (Reengineering of Engineering Education Program) must be enlarged.

APPENDIX - TABLES OF THE NEW CURRICULAR STRUCTURE

The tables present the discipline distribution of the new curriculum into periods of the Electrical Engineering Course. Each period represent one semester. The disciplines are presented with theirs respective credit hours. The capital letter T represent credit hour in theory or exercise lectures, and the capital letter L represent formal laboratory activities. The letters Tr. represent credit hours of homework. This entity is disappearing from the whole curriculum because we believe that all disciplines need intensive homework. Credit hour types T and L represent 15 semester hours, and credit hour type Tr represents 30 semester hours.

TABLE 1

FULL QUALIFICATION DISCIPLINES

TABLE 2

COMPLEMENTARY DISCIPLINES OF ELECTROTECHNIQUE AREA

TABLE 3

COMPLEMENTARY DISCIPLINES OF ELECTRONIC AREA

SIXTH PERIOD
Digital Systems II	2T
Laboratory of Digital Systems II	2L
SEVENTH PERIOD
Digital Systems III	2T
Laboratory of Digital Systems III	2L
Electronic Circuits III	4T
Laboratory of Electronic Circuits III	3L
Electronic Instrumentation I	2T
Communication Principles	3T
Antennas	3T
EIGHTH PERIOD
Application of Linear Integrated Systems	2T + 3L
Digital Communication I	2T
Application of Microprocessors II	2T

TABLE 4

ELECTIVE DISCIPLINES OF THE ELECTROTECHNIQUE AREA

TABLE 5

ELECTIVE DISCIPLINES OF THE ELECTRONIC AREA

TABLE 6

SUB-SETS OF ELECTIVE DISCIPLINES THAT SHAPE A SPECIALIZATION
SUB-AREA OF THE ELECTRONIC AREA

TABLE 7

COMPULSORY DISCIPLINES

Back to Table of Contents