The ELF project: Creating the future laboratory

The authors have explored the use of computers as an adjunct to motivate and aid the comprehension of undergraduate students in their engineering courses. They have developed courses for the first-year introductory engineering course, for a sophmore electrical engineering course, and for a design-oriented senior computer engineering course. The common theme in these courses is the use of virtual engineering realities (VER). In VERs, classroom experiences are designed to mimic industrial experiences or laboratory experiences. Results show that students are motivated by classroom situations which mimic real engineering experiences. The computer can be used both as a tutoring tool which can be a useful adjunct to classroom or laboratory instruction and as an environment to develop interesting and powerful software products. >