World First for Online Engineering Tuition

22 students at a Scottish-based postgraduate institute met up with their course tutors for the first time after completing an electronics design course which uses facilities located two hundred miles away.

The course, Advanced Electronic Design Automation, has been developed for internet-based delivery by Bolton Institute and the Northumbria University. Although tuition via the web is becoming commonplace, the remote access to industry standard software which is essential to this course is a world first for education and has only become possible in the last twelve months.

Masters and doctoral students at the Livingston-based Institute for System Level Integration signed up for the course last November and followed the syllabus by self-directed study. Teaching materials, assignments and learning support were provided online by tutors based at Bolton and at its partner institution, Northumbria University (UNN). The tutors were available for consultation and advice by phone and by email and assignments were returned by secure email to each student.

The course benefitted students seeking to boost their knowledge of hardware design prior to studying related modules in the ISLI syllabus in System Level Integration. 85% of the students who enrolled completed on schedule and achieved an average mark of 76%. Ian Elliot, one of the module authors and tutors, said, "All the students worked tremendously hard to complete this module and it shows in the results - A and B scores were the norm."

The course enables students and engineers to build their skills in hardware fundamentals, including VHDL, Verilog and Spice. The breakthrough in course delivery was achieved when new software was introduced which allowed the team to speed up remote access by a factor of 20. Bolton is now exploring future developments of the Metaframe software, including the integration of tutors and students on design exercises, so that geographically isolated students gain experience of working in design teams as they would in an industrial environment.

Comments Dr. Steve Mowbray, MSc Course Director at ISLI, "Participating in the remote design automation course was a novel development for ISLI students; feedback indicated that they found the course to be a worthwhile foundation for other aspects of their studies."

ISLI is a strong proponent of collaboration in education and training and is actively pursuing opportunities to collaborate with Bolton and UNN and other academic institutions in remote course delivery in the future.

About ISLI

The Institute for System Level Integration is an academic collaboration of four leading Scottish Universities - Edinburgh, Glasgow, Heriot-Watt and Strathclyde. It was established in October 1998 and formally constituted in December 1998. The Institute combines the research and teaching strengths of seven University Departments with those of its own academic and design experts. Its mission is to support the growth of system level integration (SLI) and system-on-chip (SoC) design through world-class research, postgraduate education and professional training programmes.

For further information about ISLI:  www.sli-institute.ac.uk

Prepared by Noreen O'Donnell of ISLI and published here with permission.
Published by the CET Postgraduate Programmes Office, Bolton Institute. 25.04.01 DB