Starting NIWeek Out Right With the Academic Forum

[bcwilson]

NIWeek attendees are lifelong learners, so it’s fitting that one of the first events is the Academic Forum. The forum brings professors and researchers together to share best practices and ideas for using NI products in the academic space.

If you’ve ever tried to teach another human anything, then you know it’s not always easy to keep an audience engaged, and it’s all the more difficult when you’re dealing with complex engineering curriculum and an audience of young people. But the NIWeek presenters I got to see today are innovators, and they’re pairing NI education solutions with unique classroom approaches to make sure the future spectrum of engineers is as broad as possible.

For example, Texas Tech University is investigating the different learning styles of engineering students and how products like NI myDAQ can help retain students that might leave the discipline after a year or two because the typical engineering education format didn’t fit their learning style. Texas Tech plans to also test out an inverted lecture/homework format with the NI myDAQ this fall, and I can’t wait to hear how it turns out.

After lunch, I heard about how high school students visiting the University of Manchester for interview day get to simulate a simple alarm system using NI Multisim, actually build it using NI ELVIS, and then program it with LabVIEW to send a text message to their cell phone when the alarm is triggered. This engages students from day one with a device they’re very familiar with… their cell phone, and it’s just the beginning of how the university is embedding NI hardware and software into their curriculum.

Another highlight of the Academic Forum was getting to see some really impressive students showcase their Student Design competition entries. The overall winner of the competition will be announced at the Graphical System Design Achievement awards ceremony, but you can see all the entries on the NI Student Community.

After checking out some of today’s technical sessions at the Academic Forum, I certainly wouldn’t mind being an engineering student in 2011, and I bet some of our seasoned NIWeek attendees wouldn’t have minded an NI myDAQ in their backpack during college, either. The future of engineering education and research looks pretty bright and today got me even more excited for Thursday’s keynote, which takes a look at how students are using graphical system design to engineer a better future.

I missed today's keynote on the Future of Engineering Education, so if you were there, be sure to let us know what you learned!