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THE INFINITY PROJECT: EXPANDING SIGNAL-PROCESSING-BASED ENGINEERING EDUCATION TO THE HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM

G.C. Orsak’, S.C. Douglas’, R.A. Athale2, D.C. Munson, J T - . ~ , J.R. Treichler4, S.L. Wood5, and M . A . Yoder‘ ‘Department of Electrical Engineering, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275

2Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030 3Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801

4Applied Signal Technology, 160 Sobrante Way, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 5Department of Electrical Engineering, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA 95053

‘Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, IN 47803

ABSTRACT This paper outlines the goals, structure, and technology elements of The INFINITY Project, a joint effort between university educators, industrial partners, and civic leaders to introduce a signal-processing-based engineering curriculum at the high school educational level. Implementation issues of the program are addressed, including class textbook and laboratory creation, teacher training, and online classroom support. Initial responses to the effort from teachers and students at fourteen different high schools are highly positive, and plans for further expansion of the program are given.

1. INTRODUCTION Engineers make up a vital part of today’s high-technology world. The Internet, personal computers, cellular tele- phones, and other fruits of engineering labor are used by millions of people in their daily lives. In highly-developed countries, many children are exposed to advanced technology at a young age through computers, video games, digital audio and video, and electronic mail. Because of modern-day pre-college curricula, however, many of these children will never learn about the mathematical and scientific underpinnings of our society’s ubiquitous high technology. Such a situation is likely to undermine progress in technology unless society is able to foster a significantly- larger group of prospective engineering students. Given that science and technology pervades many endeavors in business, law, medicine, and government, such a situation also undermines progress in these diverse fields.

For those that pursue a career in a technology-related field, most receive their technological education in post- secondary institutions. When discussing post-secondary engineering education, engineering educators typically focus on the technical details of their teaching efforts, with the view that improving the delivery of education will improve the capabilities of the engineering community as a whole. Such efforts are an integral part of what all engineering pro- fessors do every day in their roles as teachers and mentors.

Recent workforce data drive us to focus on a new prob- lem in engineering education that is only partially related to the above concerns: the supply of engineers. Such deci- sions about how many engineers to graduate at a particular university are governed by many issues, but it is clear from statistics that current graduation levels in the engineering

OThis material is based in part upon work supported by Texas Instruments, National Science Foundation, and the Dallas Inde- pendent School District.

0-7803-7041 -4/01/$10.00 02001 IEEE 2709

fields are not meeting the demand for engineers. Some recent examples illustrate this fact.

The organizers of National Techies Day, an annual event to encourage would-be engineering students to enter the technological workforce, recently asked parents what careers they desire for their children. By a substantial majority, these parents preferred that their children study technology over business (75%), medicine (72%), and law (58%) [l]. Clearly, today’s parents value a high-technology education for their children, seeing it as a path to success and fulfillment. For those who graduate with an engineering education, the current economic opportunities are bountiful. A recent survey of the U.S. semiconductor industry indicates that an average of 10% of all jobs in the sector are vacant-a number approaching 500,000 positions [2]. While such openings are driven by economic forces, many business leaders believe that the emphasis on high technology in the workplace represents a permanent shift in the needs of the society as a whole.

What skills will prepare students for the challenges of a high-tech society? Clearly, basic knowledge of both mathematics and science are critical. It is our belief, however, that an understanding of how engineers use math and science in technology development is equally-crucial to students’ success. The best way to ensure that students gain that knowledge is to include engineering and technology as part of the core subjects in elementary and high school education. The INFINITY Project represents our combined efforts toward this goal.

This paper outlines the goals, structure, and elements of The INFINITY Project, a joint effort between university educators, industrial partners, and civic leaders to introduce an engineering and technology curriculum at the high school educational level. The partner institutions and com- panies are: Southern Methodist University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, Santa Clara University, George Mason Univer- sity, Texas Instruments, Hyperception, Inc., Applied Signal Technology, the National Science Foundation, and regional school districts across the country.

Issues addressed within this paper include

the rationale behind the choice of topics within the

the classroom technology used within this curriculum;

how the curriculum is delivered to the teachers who shall provide the classroom education; and

initial evaluations of the delivery and progress of the effort.

INFINITY curriculum;

Authorized licensed use limited to: SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIV. Downloaded on October 31, 2008 at 18:44 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

It is our hope that these issues will serve as a model for the implementation of similar efforts in other educational fields and in engineering education as a whole.

2. CURRICULUM GOALS The curriculum for The INFINITY Project has been designed to meet certain goals in terms of subject areas, scope, and requisite difficulty level.

1. The curriculum must be teachable by existing high school educators drawn f rom the mathematics or science fields. Making the curriculum teachable by existing high school educators is motivated by a number of practical concerns. For example, it is unreasonable to implement a high school engineering curriculum that would require trained engineers to teach it because of the current general shortage of engineering talent in the economic marketplace. Moreover, the curriculum should not be in opposition to existing programs in mathematics and science; rather, it should be integrated with and support these efforts. Such integration is best served by employing the qualified educational personnel already in place in our high schools.

2. The subject areas must include topics that are practical and relevant to the students as a whole. Because of the per- vasiveness of high technology in many students’ lives, it is highly desirable to draw upon examples that these students find interesting, exciting, and fun. Indeed, an engineering curriculum has the advantage over curricula in other areas due to the current heightened emotional and societal im- pact of high technology. Inventions such as the compact disc (CD), the digital versatile disc (DVD), and MPEG I Audio Layer 3 (MP3) are already in the minds of many students, and these subjects represent opportunities to teach about important engineering, mathematical, and scientific concepts. Our curriculum’s emphasis, however, is not fo- cused on the practical details of technologies that are likely to change. Rather, an emphasis is placed the long-term issues of engineering design and fundamental mathematical

existing and future technological developments.

3. Hands-on experiments, along with supporting hardware and software, must be included in order to make the subject “come alive” to the students. Clearly, a class on high technology must make use of high technology to illustrate its capabilities and limitations. Such technologies are not new to the high school classroom, however. The electronic calculator has revolutionized the teaching of mathematics in high schools, and Internet-connected personal computers are available at most U.S. high schools as well. Unlike these existing tools, however, the technology for INFINITY must be easily programmable and reconfigurable for different tasks. It also must integrate with existing technologies to be low-cost. To these ends, we have partnered with Texas Instruments and Hyperception, Inc., to develop an INFIN- ITY Technology Kit to meet these needs. When installed on a capable PC, the Technology Kit enables the processing of audio and video signals and information in real-time on a DSP-enhanced personal computing platform within a simple icon-driven interactive software environment. More details about the INFINITY Technology Kit can be found in Section 4.

4 . The overall presentation must encourage high school students to take more advanced courses in mathematics and science. We have not designed this course to replace any

and scientific concepts that are the underpinnings of both

particular mathematics or science class; rather, it is an ad- ditional courses to augment current offerings and motivate students to take other courses. For this reason, we have designed flexibility into the INFINITY curriculum so that it may be taught at the sophomore, junior, or senior high school levels. As for prerequisites, calculus is not required, although a mathematical background equivalent to that of a junior who has completed Algebra 2 is recommended.

5. The presentataon must encourage more students t o become high technology professionals. Future generations of high school students that become technology professionals will need to understand mathematical and scientific concepts beyond those that are currently required for graduation in present-day high school programs. Properly designed, the proposed curriculum can help motivate students to explore these advanced topics sooner and with greater personal interest, so that they are better prepared when pursuing these topics beyond high school graduation.

3. CURRICULUM DESCRIPTION As in all educational pursuits, the INFINITY curriculum requires a core discipline upon which to build fundamental concepts and pedagogy. We believe that the field of multimedia-based signal and information processing, as manifested in wireless communications, computer networks, and digital entertainment, represents an ideal core subject for teaching engineering fundamentals, given the level of recreational interest that high school students have shown in these topics. We also believe that these topics offer the right balance of basic mathematics and science for the proposed educational experience.

As an element of the INFINITY curriculum, we have written a textbook that embodies its goals and focus [3]. Consisting of over 600 pages of text and 500 figures orga- nized into twenty chapters, the textbook covers nearly all aspects of modern-day multimedia and information technol-

and engineering. The textbook’s topics include

definitions and descriptions of digital and analog technology; the engineering design process; mathematical models for technology projections; definitions and representations of signals; fundamental systems concepts (input/output behavior, frequency response); the basics of hearing and sight perception relevant to digital audio and imaging; the physics and mathematics of electronic and optical displays; information storage, compression, and encryption; radios and wireless communications; and computer networks and the Internet

In addition, each chapter contains review questions designed to test comprehension and mathematical understanding of the textbook’s main concepts and ideas.

Along with this textbook, we have designed laboratory experiments that employ the INFINITY Technology Kit to teach important engineering concepts using real-time DSP hardware and software. These experiments are best described as “digital worksheets” within the Hypercep- tion (http: //uuu. hyperception. corn) block-diagram software environment, in which students can explore existing

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Fig. 1: The INFINITY Technology Kit

and create new real-time signal processing systems through a point-and-click user interface. Examples of some of the experiments include:

0 a digital-imaging-based coin counter that determines the number of a certain type of coin in a real-time video signal stream; a musical instrument synthesizer;

0 a real-time digital transmitter and receiver for sending text messages across the room using loudspeakers and microphones; and a real-time object tracker;

In addition, the laboratory experiments provide tactile feed- back to the students in understanding important concepts such as frequencies of signals, quantization effects, and the ways that information can be stored, compressed, coded, and transmitted.

4. TECHNOLOGY The INFINITY Technology Kit is a multimedia hardware and software system for converting a standard PC into an easy-to-use modern engineering design environment with a wide array of capabilities. These capabilities bring to life the engineering concepts taught in the INFINITY Project’s engineering curriculum. The pre-designed lab experiments that come with the software allow students to see first hand the full range of engineering experiences of envisioning, de- signing, and testing modern technology.

The technology used in the INFINITY Technology Kit is based upon Texas Instruments’ DSP chips and a graphical programming environment, called Visual Application Builder, designed and developed by one of The INFINITY Project’s partners, Hyperception, Inc. A PC with the IN- FINITY Technology Kit is capable of an array of real-time engineering applications ranging from audio, image, and video processing to advanced graphical mathematical operations incorporating real data sets. This system has been designed to easily acquire data in real time from both microphones and video cameras and simultaneously execute mathematical operations and algorithms. This power al- lows students to create and test new technologies and develop and evaluate new real-time systems.

The components of the INFINITY Technology Kit are: 1. DSP Hardware: Texas Instruments TMS320C31 Digi-

tal Signal Processor board.

Fig. 2: High school teachers at The INFINITY Project training institute.

2. DSP Software: Hyperception’s Visual Application Builder for INFINITY graphical component-oriented software.

3. Multimedia Accessories: Powered speakers, micro- phone with preamplifier, audio adapter, audio cable, AC power supply, 3-D glasses (red/blue), 9V battery.

The INFINITY Technology Kit is a complete system for students to use in a typical high school laboratory setting. This kit installs onto a standard P C with a minimum con- figuration of a 486/66 MHz Intel Pentium processor running Windows 95 or later as well as a sound card. In addition, a low-cost internet video camera is suggested but not required for image and video experiments.

5. TEACHER DEVELOPMENT AND

Teacher training is a major component of The INFINITY Project. We understand that to effectively teach engineering and advanced technology at the high school level, teachers must be supplied with more than an innovative curriculum and modern equipment. Teachers must also have access to training that directly helps them teach the material and operate the equipment in a classroom setting.

To fill this important need, The INFINITY Project currently trains all teachers of the new engineering curriculum by experts in the curriculum. This training covers the basics of the course material as well as those of the INFIN- ITY Technology Kit. Our INFINITY training institute is 40 hours long and is usually conducted over a one-week period. Our institute has been designed to be “hands-on” for the high school teachers. Teachers new to technology are given many opportunities to work with the equipment and apply the new material to real problems in a supportive and fun environment.

During the summer of 2000, we offered two training In- stitutes that trained 25 high school teachers on all aspects of the INFINITY curriculum. The responses of the teachers was entirely positive and enthusiastic, as measured from evaluations given to every teacher at the end of the training

TRAINING

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Fig. 3: INFINITY students in the high school classroom.

period. What follows are typical quotes from the trainees when asked what they enjoyed most about the training:

“All of the details involved in each chapter . . .will fascinate the student.” - I N F I N I T Y trainee, Dal- las, TX, S u m m e r 2000

“Interesting, interactive, knowledge-packed. . . I learned a lot, and I think the students will like it.” - I N F I N I T Y trainee, Dallas, T X , S u m m e r 2000

6. IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS

In the current 2000-2001 inaugural year of The INFINITY Project, our high-technology curriculum is being taught to approximately 500 students in fourteen different high schools in the Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, TX, areas. These schools include both public and private institutions of single-gender and mixed-gender students at urban and suburban campuses. Fig. 3 shows a typical laboratory ses- sion at one of the high schools, in which students are using PCs enhanced by the INFINITY Technology Kit to explore engineering concepts. The module below the keyboard in the picture is a real-time DSP board that the students are programming using the Hyperception software tools.

At every school where the INFINITY curriculum has been implemented, the course has been accepted with en- thusiasm by students and teachers alike. Many students have discovered engineering as a viable career, as the fol- lowing quote indicates:

“I didn’t know what engineering was before IN- FINITY. I thought it was a huge, mathematic thing. Now I actually consider getting a job in engineering.” -Pabla Lopez, senior, Sunset High School, Dallas, T X .

Teachers also find the course content to provide the moti- vation that previous approaches have lacked:

“For the seven years I taught Algebra 2, I com- plained about the lack of real-world problems or mathematical applications in textbooks. The IN- FINITY Project offers not only applications of high school mathematics, but applications that are in my student’s real world - the digital world.” --

Sylvia San Pedro, teacher, Booker T. Washington High School, Houston, T X .

As for teacher and classroom support, we have found that a combination of methods serves teachers the best. We currently employ a web-based bulletin board to allow teachers to request assistance and clarification on both curricular and technical issues from the INFINITY authors and staff. We also have employed graduate students as well as volun- teers from local industry to mentor the teachers and students. The teachers and student readily accept this “hands- on” approach to delivering education, as one teacher states:

“My students know I don’t have all the answers . . . They understand that I’m learning right along with them.” -Tina Branch, teacher, David W . Carter High School, Dallas, T X .

As for expansion of the program, our current plans have the INFINITY curriculum being offered at 40 different high schools in the 2001-2002 academic year, with 30 of these in Texas and the remaining 10 in other states across the United States. Interest in the program has exceeded our capabilities to meet the demand; there are many more schools that wish to offer this program. To meet this demand, we in- tend to adopt a growth method similar to that used by the Teachers Teaching with Technology ( T3) program for intro- ducing electronic calculators into high school math classes (http: //uuu. t3uv. org). In that model, select teachers who have been trained become certified trainers themselves, thereby allowing exponential growth of trainers to meet an exponential growth in training demand. From our current projections for the program, we expect to educate a total of 100,000 students in The INFINITY Project curriculum by 2005.

7. CONCLUSIONS The Infinity Project is a curriculum development and implementation effort designed to introduce high school students to the critical thinking, principles, and excitement of engineering. This paper describes the initial efforts on this two-year-old project. Further developments, as well as ad- ditional details regarding the goals, implementation, and progress of The INFINITY Project, can be found at the Project webpage (http: //uuu. infinity-project. org).

REFERENCES G.C. Orsak, ‘Children should learn about engineering,” editorial, T h e Dallas Mornang News, Apr. 11, 2000. T. Engibous, “Texans must prepare for high-tech jobs,” editorial, The Dallas Mornzng News, Oct. 15, 2000. RA. Athale, S.C. Douglas, D.C. Munson, Jr., G C. Or- sak, J.R. Tkeichler, S.L. Wood, and M.A. Yodcr, Mul- tzmedza and Inforrnatzon Engzneerzng, textbook draft, to be published.

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