Engineering Technology at
Queensborough Community College

by Holland Cotter

QCC's Model Multimedia/Networking Classroom

Funded by three back-to-back grants from the National Science Foundation Division of Undergraduate Education, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology (ECET) Department at Queensborough Community College (QCC) has used computer technology to create innovative teaching tools. Their cornerstone project has been designated as an NSF Flagship project to serve as a national model for undergraduate instruction in science, mathematics and technology.

The QCC team, led by Bernard E. Mohr (PI) and Bruce Naples (co-PI), includes ECET faculty and staff members Nathan Chao (co-PI), Thomas J. Gerson (co-PI), Stuart Asser, Pericles Emanuel, and Denis McGarrigle as well as student interns working on stipends provided through the National Science Foundation's Alliance for Minority Participation (NSF-AMP).

Queensborough's goal, says Mohr, is to "use computing to improve students' mastery of engineering technology skills, heighten student academic participation and achievement, emulate an industrial workplace environment, and enhance academic and employment opportunities." In addition, he and his colleagues have initiated a highly successful series of national hands-on seminars for teaching science and engineering faculty how to produce multimedia courseware. The three NSF-funded projects being developed by the Queensborough team are:

A Connectivity Laboratory to Strengthen Engineering Technology

The first NSF-funded grant was earmarked for technological improvement of classroom instruction delivery and has resulted at QCC in a model multimedia/networking classroom.

The lab has 17 workstations - one of which is the instructor's - arranged on four tiers amphitheater-style. Each station has a Pentium multimedia computer equipped with sound cards, a CD player and a removable hard drive. All units deliver full motion video and are connected to a local area network via 10Base-T cabling under the flooring and a patch panel at the rear of the room. They are also connected to a network laser printer. The instructor's station is a more robust version of the student stations, with extra memory, a larger video display and a larger hard disk.

The multimedia instruction is delivered via a video distribution system called CLASSNET. The system, which is independent of QCC's local area network (LAN), connects all 17 monitors. The instructor, whose station has a Teacher Control Unit, can observe and take part in any student session and can broadcast that session to the class if the work going on is deemed pertinent. Teams of students can also work interactively in this way.

The use of removable hard drives means that each class using the lab can act as a self-sufficient unit. For example, in a networking course, each student team gets its own file server to install and supervise. At the end of each class session, the hard drive is removed and stored away until the class meets again, thus minimizing the chance of files being altered or lost between class meetings.

Engineering Technology Instruction for the 21st Century

This NSF Flagship project consists of two pilot courses - Electronics I geared to first year students and Microcomputers for second year students - redesigned by QCC using such advanced electronic technologies as online laboratory manuals; interactive multimedia presentations, online text for microcomputers; video and laser disk production; installation and configuration of LAN resources; and project evaluation. A typical three-hour laboratory session for Electronics I has been divided into three parts. The first is a lecture using a projected multimedia presentation in which the instructor can demonstrate each phase of the lab experiment for that class. Next, the students work at their individual lab stations, each of which is fitted with a computer monitor on which they can review the presentation online at their own pace. The class concludes with another multimedia presentation which will help them in writing their lab reports. Naples notes that in the two years the pilot courses have been offered the response by both students and faculty - some of whom were highly skeptical of the pedagogical use of multimedia technology - has been overwhelmingly favorable.

Because of its designation as a NSF Flagship Project, the project was twice evaluated by a NSF Visitation and Evaluation Committee comprised of two NSF program directors and representatives from Polytechnic University of New York, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Franklin Institute of Boston, Portland (OR) Community College, NYNEX and Cabletron Systems.

The project was featured at the NSF Project Impact in Washington, DC in 1994, in a NSF Invitational Panel at the Frontiers in Education (1995) in San Jose, and at the NSF Project Showcase at the ASEE Annual Conference (1995) in Anaheim.

Papers were also presented at the League for Innovation (1994) in Nashville, Frontiers in Education (1995) in San Jose, and the ASEE regional conference at NJIT (1994).

Technology Instruction for the 21st Century

The third project, like the others, is built on the common theme of changing the way technology is taught, and involves the development of versatile courseware that will cut across a broad span of sciences and technologies, letting instructional materials be reused across a variety of disciplines. For example, modules which demonstrate fiber optic technology may be placed on a local area network and used by instructors in telecommunications, local area network and multimedia network courses. Through such distributions students can also have "previews" of advanced technology applications.

Courseware modules are being developed for multimedia/high speed networks, data acquisition, and embedded systems. A new laboratory is in place to consolidate student coursework in feedback and controls, data acquisition, and embedded systems. The Connectivity Laboratory is being upgraded to further facilitate its multimedia capabilities.

As part of this project and the "Engineering Technology Instruction" project, QCC has designed and implemented a series of hands-on instructional workshops for science, mathematics, engineering and technology faculty. The seminars, which have included a high percentage of CUNY faculty in their national enrollment, teach the use of the latest multimedia tools, from scanning graphics to digitizing video to the use of Authorware, for developing classroom and laboratory presentations. The results have been enthusiastically received by the participants, and in June of 1996 and 1997, four more workshops entitled "Technology Instruction for the 21st Century: Process and Products" are being offered.

Among QCC's anticipated future plans are a proposed Phase II of "Technology Instruction for the 21st Century," which will concentrate on enhancing the use of telecommunications in instruction.

One project component will focus on remote access and distance teaching/learning, considered by many to be key teaching tools of the future allowing, for example, homebound and working students to access courseware and network resources via dial-up with a modem.

Groundwork for such development is already being laid in a pilot project between QCC and NYNEX QUEENS and INTEL, and in a collaboration with QCC and Minicom Corporation. These projects will extend the interactivity of distance teaching through enhancements to the CLASSNET video distribution system.

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