EE Professors -- Textbook recommendation needed, please!

So are all of us overworked EE professors at the community college level. Comes with the territory. If she doesn't understand that now, god help her in the years to come.

The first time you offer an on-line course, you had best be prepared to spend five to ten times the time you spend in a B&M (bricks and mortar) class setting the sucker up and doing all the detailed explanations that you can do in the classroom with chalkboard. You don't have that luxury on line.

The upside to that is that once you have the course "canned" it is about ten percent of the work of a B&M class for years to come.

If your instructor doesn't understand this, gently inform her of the way the real world works.

Jim

Background: I am posting this inquiry on behalf of a slightly overworked EE professor at the local community college. I am currently taking a distance learning class on circuit fundamentals, and the professor is planning to offer a distance learning class on basic transistor and amplifier theory in the near future -- as soon as this Spring, if possible. Among the holdups is that she needs to find the right textbook, ASAP. (And for my part, I am hoping to take the class this Spring, which is why I am helping her in her textbook hunt!)

Obviously, she needs a decent textbook in basic transistor and amplifier theory, something at roughly the level of "Electronic Devices" by Floyd (Prentice Hall).

The kicker, however, is this: The way she runs her distance learning classes, she wants to be able to give her students fairly detailed solutions to all the homework problems, and she doesn't always have time to work out all those solutions herself (she is running multiple distance learning classes). Therefore -- she needs a textbook where the publisher will provide, to faculty members, detailed, worked solutions to the homework problems in the text, preferably in electronic form (such as .pdf), so she can send these solutions out to the students.

The way my current class is working is, we first try to work the homework problems on our own; but then compare our own efforts to the solved solutions (sorry, I guess that phrasing is redundant), both so we can see if we've done it correctly; and so if we have not done the problem correctly, we can learn how to do it right. For this class on circuits, we are using "Engineering Circuit Analysis" by Hayt, and apparently they do provide her with the solutions in .pdf form, so she can send them to us. Apparently, she has so far been unable to find a similar text for transistor theory and applications.

I've checked the Web site for "Electronic Devices" by Floyd myself -- I happened to pick up the text a few years ago -- and I cannot tell from that site whether or not the publisher provides detailed solutions for the HW problems at all, let alone provides them in .pdf format or similar.

Anyway, bottom line: I (we, actually) appreciate any recommendation for a good sophomore/junior level textbook on transistor theory/basic applications, plus appropriate related topics -- basics of op-amps, oscillators, you probably know what else applies -- where the publisher will provide, to the instructor, .pdf or similar files with detailed, worked-out solutions to the homework problems presented in the textbook.

Please be kind enough to send leads my way, via this newsgroup or the e-mail (slightly mangled, below), and I will forward them to the professor.

Thanks! Steve O. steveqdr useThatFirstPartJustAsIs AATT RemoveSpamProtectPhrase Yahoo DDOOTT Ccoomm

Hello Steven,

If I'd have to start out again I would certainly pick Horowitz, Hill: "The Art of Electronics". Winfield Hill is actually an active participant in this newsgroup (sci.electronics.design).

A source that might help in distance learning would be MIT. AFAIK they placed most if not all of their courses online. But I have no idea how this can be handled from a copyright point of view. Best would be to talk to them about it.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Winfield,

True, but if I were a professor that book would be mandatory to have. Especially distance-learners can easily lose track of reality since they don't get involved in labs and stuff like that. So they need to build things with their own hands.

I am less and less enthused about the quality of recent grads. Many of them can't even solder, let alone design anything at transistor level. Some weren't even able to understand my module specs although I am not too bad in writing that kind of prose. It can't be so bad because even mechanical engineers tend to understand it. Then again those are folks in their 40's to 60's.

There is much talk about age discimination and I am sure it happens. But for some reason all the engineers I hired were over 35 and some much above that. Sometimes it's similar with techs. The best guy I ever worked with was around 75. After retiring he went onto his wife's nerves too much and she made him go back to work again.

Regards, Joerg

Steven,

One option is Introductory Electronic Devices and Circuits by Paynter (Prentice Hall). The companion site is at

Your professor should check with professors at other colleges that offer distance learning in the EE field. They may be her best source for textbook recommendations and to educate her about what is required to set up a useful distance learning course and the virtual labs that may go with it. Among others, Old Dominion University (Norfolk, VA) offers several distance learning courses.

Richard

McGraw-Hill has bundled a complete course that even a community college "professor" can handle, this book gets good reviews:

Joerg, I can relate to the accuracy of your post.

When I worked at Raytheon, whenever a tough software challenge confronted us, our top sofware consultant was a guy approaching 80 years old! He was paid the "big bucks" because he could invariably resolve the problem. That was back around 1980 before the Internet even existed (except for ARPA).

Now I am approaching 70, been retired for almost 10 years and my telephone rings nearly off-the-hook with calls from my previous employers.

Raytheon, in particular, shot themselves in the foot by laying-off off many of their higher paid employees after the age of 50 to save money. What the financial guys in the company overlooked was the fact that most of the employees laid off were the only people qualified by their experience to write technical proposals to the government, in turn costing the firm millions of dollars in lost business. They also lost site of the fact that these guys that were laid off were the only employees with sufficient experience and knowledge to make their systems function properly.

As a consequence of this extremely poor management decision, Raytheon's once robust Equipment Divison no longer exists, and hence they extensively rely on former employees hired as consultants to satisfy their continuing corporate responsibilities to the federal government and defence department.

These reponsibilities include --

The SPS-49 radar system The ROTHR over-the-horizon radar system The Tomahawk missile system The HAWK missile system The Patriot missile system ... and numerous other programs.

Since the newly hired college graduates are clearly no up to the challenge, what in the heck are company's like Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon going to do when old farts like myself die?

I'm no mental giant, but back when I was in college we had a CO-OP program that required us to work in industry for half of the year. When we returned to classes, our experiences in the field were discussed and we were advised of what we had done wrong, plus what we had done correctly. This prepared us for entry into the real world. Unfortunately such college programs are rare today and largely limited to the very top technological oriented institutions.

'Nuff said....

Harry C.

Make as much money as we can until we die ?:-)

I don't think I could really retire, I'd go bonkers with the inactivity.

...Jim Thompson

Hello Harry,

That is exactly one of the points. I got my degree in Europe and CO-OP was and AFAIK still is a mandatory part of the curriculum. You had to complete the first 3 months before mid-term or they would not allow you to sit for any further exams. The other 3 months had to be completed before they'd give you the degree. Very simple, not enough CO-OP time, no degree.

They also would not assist in finding those jobs. We had to do that on our own.

But the real knowledge came as a hobbyist, by building stuff. Lots of stuff. I didn't learn the Smith Chart as a student but by actually needing it. Then there were lots of jobs and this has hit me in my grades. After ten hours of wrestling with some control circuitry I often just couldn't bring myself to study another five hours. Then again, what good does it do to graduate with top grades and not have the foggiest idea of how to make an AGC amp with transistors and for under $1 in parts?

Regards, Joerg

I read in sci.electronics.design that Joerg wrote (in ) about 'EE Professors -- Textbook recommendation needed, please!', on Tue, 27 Sep 2005:

I often wonder. I sorted out the electronics for two fellow-students, one of whom got a First. I built lots of audio stuff and FM receivers. Although it wasn't compulsory, I did 7 weeks in production engineering between first and second years (incidentally saving them $$$ for screened cabins by turning the AM radio alignment stations through 90 degrees to eliminate the fluorescent lamp interference), and then 8 weeks in design engineering between second and third years. When I went back for a full-time job, I knew two of the interview board and I'd worked for both of them.

Hi, Steve. Floyd is a good two-semester junior college-level textbook.

If you and the instructor are otherwise happy with the book, I'd recommend using the Prentice Hall Rep Locator on the website to get in touch with the customer service rep for her school and department. She can get all kinds of information on how the textbook, lab manual, Multisim, the instructor text, CD-ROMs, website and other teaching materials can be integrated into her online course.

Usually, with multimedia extravaganza courses like this, other resources are available from the publisher which haven't been included for one reason or another. Sometimes, these can be pried loose before, but not after, the course textbook decision has been made.

So, put the publisher customer service rep to work, and see what Prentice-Hall can do to sell the text to the professor. After all, that's what the CSR is paid to do.

Good luck Chris

Having been in academia at the time (not EE, but a sideways field where I got to teach EE students) I can tell you that the blame can squarely be laid on VLSI technology in the 80's/early 90's. All the young professors being hired at the time did nothing but VLSI, and all the students pretty much wanted to do nothing but VLSI, because that was where the big bucks were and admittedly that was where most of the excitement was.

It's hard to put your "hands on" those microscopic transistors so instead the students learned computer-based layout tools for their last couple years before graduating. Most of the ones I knew poo-pooed their first couple years where they actually had labs where they put parts together and watched traces on scopes - they only wanted to connect the dots on CRT's, to them that was electronics.

Tim.

That's the same thing *your* seniors were saying about you in the 60's and 70's...

No, I know two people who worked at Raytheon. Harry was exactly right. Both of these people were hired back by Raytheon as consultants to rescue the programs they were working on but in both cases it was way too late. One project was for the FAA. Makes me really shy about flying any more.

tim

I have a friend who's a consultant who tells stories about how he was called in to fix some EMI susceptibility problems with some of those motorized hospital beds that raise/lower/fold/unfold etc. In the presence of strong interference, the various motors would start activating when they weren't supposed to, potentially turning the bed's occupant into something of a pretezel... or at least a pretty freaked out customer (realistically getting turned into a pretzel takes some pretty precise control that random motor firing isn't likely to create, but it's entertaining to _think_ about that possibility...)!

Hello Joel,

A wee software bug can cause similar effects, such as rendering a large ship uncontrollable and make it crash onto the rocks. See page 2 of jack Ganssle's newsletter:

Now I just hope they don't do this kind of SW design for aircraft.

Regards, Joerg

My experience is that "turnkey" solutions never are turnkey. Just the same the Malvino texts are usually pretty good, rarely excellent, more about practical, less about deep theory.

The University of Wyoming is big into distance learning including GE and Surveying. Try looking at their offerings.