Refined ‘Chalk-and-Talk’ of Lecture Content: Teaching Signals and Systems at the Griffith School of Engineering

Abstract

As a core fundamental subject in all Electrical and Electronic Engineering courses, Signals and Systems has traditionally been a difficult subject, not only for engineering students to learn, but also for lecturers to teach effectively. The inherent mathematical nature of the subject, coupled with highly abstract concepts, such as Dirac delta functions, convolution, orthogonal signals and frequency-domain analysis, causes students to find the subject matter too challenging and difficult to understand. This is an unfortunate outcome, given that Signals and Systems provides the essential foundations for further subjects, such as communication systems, digital signal processing, and control systems. When coupled with the trend in Universities toward PowerPoint魢ased teaching, important derivations, process, and understanding are often not communicated effectively, with students either becoming dazzled by fancy slideshows rather than achieving a deeper understanding; or skipping lectures because they feel they do not gain any more than what they would by simply reading the slides themselves in their own time. This study reports on the changes made since 2008, in "Signals and Systems", which is a second-year subject in the Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronic Engineering degree at Griffith University, Gold Coast campus.