The University of British Columbia

Opportunity

In its first year, interested participants exceeded places available. This year, we expect demand to be even higher. We have substantial resources available for the Project Integration Program (PIP), but we do not plan to offer it to the entire class. Students who do participate will work with a group of enthusiastic and energetic faculty members and supporting teaching assistants. Together, they will provide guidance and help students generate new ideas in a unique learning environment. 

 

Curriculum

Goal I - Make Learning More Enjoyable

PIP emphasizes skills acquisition over the ability to memorize material such as formulae and derivation methods, helping students gain confidence in their abilities, as well as their knowledge. By working together in groups, students learn communication skills, share knowledge, develop a sense of responsibility towards others, and ultimately, create strong, interpersonal bonds with other students and group leaders. 

 

Goal II -Improve Knowledge Integration Between Courses

Teaching engineering concepts in isolation through individual courses can discourage students from seeing their skills as complimentary or applicable to a real world project. Just the opposite is true in PIP. For example, by term two of this program, we see most students develop the skills to design, analyze, simulate, build and test an op-amp circuit to amplify analogue signals from a low-voltage transducer, feed the signals to an oscilloscope, sample them with an A/D converter on a PC, and then develop software to filter the signal, obtain signal to noise information, and display the results graphically. In other words, PIP students have the ability to collectively apply all of the skills acquired in all of their integrated second year courses. In this process of knowledge integration, laboratories become increasingly important. 

 

Goal III - Facilitate Group Learning and Project Participation

Through the Project Integration Program, students spend more time on project work. To assist in this, instructors remove one-third of the lecture hours from each term and apply this time to lab work. To further facilitate group learning and project work, students work in groups of six to define their own labs (within certain parameters), report their findings, and learn basic material together. Students work together in mini-design projects in each term. 

 

Goal IV - Encourage Independent Learning and Research Skills

At the start of the program, instructors distribute a comprehensive outline and a detailed list of required capabilities on which students are examined. PIP students have access to a number of traditional resources including books, web sites, and other design-oriented publications. From there, the goal is to reduce the amount of formal material covered in class to KEY concepts and a skeleton of the rest. The expectation is that students will build on these concepts by seeking out additional knowledge through hands-on project work, course resources, and sharing of their results. 

The PIP component of second year includes all Electrical & Computer Engineering courses: ELEC 251, 253, 254, 256, 259, 261, 280 and 281. Students take all of the remaining math and computer science courses - MATH 263, 265, 267 and CPSC 260 - in regular format. 

 

Evaluation

Students who enroll in PIP are evaluated on their group project work and an examination at the end of each semester. They are assigned grades in each of the second year Electrical & Computer Engineering courses, just as they are normally. We have seen that students enrolled in PIP receive, on average, marks at least as high as those taking the conventional second year program. 

 

Equipment

UBC has provided PIP with modern, well-equipped facilities to carry out student project work. We have special meeting rooms for group discussions. Each project group has 50% use of one room, equipped with workstations, technical and office software and Internet access. In the PIP laboratory, we have additional workstations with digital systems design software for downloading to target microprocessors and FPGA devices, which are used in the project modules. 

 

Registration

All students determined to be admissable to second year Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering are eligible to take PIP. Upon placement notification by Applied Science Engineering Student Services Office, select and register per the tables below.

WHY SHOULD YOU JOIN THIS PROGRAM?

"for broader understanding" 
"for improved design skills" 
"for improved communication skills" 
"for greater technical self-confidence" 

 

Second Year (Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering)

Term 1 (Effective Sept. 2006)	Cr	Term 2 (Effective Jan. 2007)	Cr
APSC 201	3	CPSC 260*	4
EECE 201 (PIP 1)	11	EECE 202 (PIP 2)	12
MATH 263	4	MATH 267	3
MATH 265	2
Total Credits	20	Total Credits	19

Second Year (Biomedical Engineering Option)

Term 1	Cr	Term 2	Cr
CPSC 260*	4	APSC 201	3
EECE 201 (PIP 1)	11	EECE 203 (PIP 2)	12
MATH 263	4	EECE 230	1
MATH 265	2	MATH 267	3
Total Credits	21	Total Credits	19

*Note: Check prerequisite information when planning CPSC electives.