Evan D. Green DUE 9551520 San Jose State University FY1995 $ 224,000 San Jose, CA 95192-0084 ILI - Leadership in Laboratory Development: Engineering Title: Development of an Interdisciplinary Curriculum in Electronic Materials and Devices An undergraduate engineer is expected to possess a wide variety of skills and knowledge beyond the fundamental engineering content of his or her course work. The need for improvement of student skills in communication, problem solving, integration of knowledge and teamwork is commonly understood. Some of this need can be met by a change in the techniques used in the teaching of laboratory courses. The traditional method of laboratory instruction frequently degenerates into a "cookbook" method, a mode in which students follow a "recipe" for experimentation from their lab book. Such exercises do not teach students to conduct an independent scientific experiment, or to record and communicate to others the information obtained during the course of an experiment. The "cookbook" method also fails to teach students to derive information explicitly from measured parameters or to properly apply statistics. In short, most laboratory instruction does not contribute to the development of the student as a critical thinker. One solution to this problem is to abandon the "cookbook" in favor of a sequence of team-oriented, open-ended laboratory experiences. In this mode of laboratory instruction, students are given a problem, trained to use the experimental apparatus, and taught the fundamental concepts necessary for understanding the problem. They are required to design the experiments and analyze the data without recourse to recipes. Since it is believed that these skills cannot be taught in a single course of instruction, our obj ective is to develop independent exercises for introducing experimental design skills into two pre-requisite classes on semiconductor devices and electronic properties (MatE 153 and EE 128), followed by an interdisciplinary, team-oriented design course in semiconductor process engineering (EE/MatE 129). The latter course will simulate the engineering roles of industry, where interdisciplinary teams are the rule and open-ended experimentation is a fact of life.
