IEEE Student Member John Torous was up late studying one night in September of 2005 at the University of California, Berkeley, when something caught his eye. Some electronic parts on a shelf in the student branch’s study lab intrigued the electrical engineering senior and chair of the school’s IEEE student branch. He took a break from his theory-based homework to do something practical: he built a flashing circuit board out of light-emitting diodes, transistors, and a breadboard. As the LEDs flashed, a light also went off in his head. Why not create a class, he thought, that would allow students to build their own electronic devices and see how exciting electrical engineering can be.

“It was fun building something, and I wanted to bring that experience to others,” Torous says. Because most introductory EE classes involve lots of theory, there are few, if any, hands-on courses. Torous had little trouble finding support from his student branch and the university, and “IEEE Hands-on Electronics” was created. The one-credit course is offered through the university’s Program for Democratic Education at Cal, which lets students create and teach their own classes. The class debuted in the Spring 2006 semester, and Torous’s late-night epiphany proved true: he had hit a chord, and that first class was packed with 25 students.

The IEEE recognized the branch’s efforts almost immediately. Last September it gave the branch a US $2500 IEEE University Partnership Program Special Opportunity Grant. The program’s goal is to form better relationships between the IEEE and the country’s best engineering schools, with the aim of boosting student membership.

MAKING IT HAPPEN Once his student branch gave the go-ahead, Torous pulled together a committee of branch officers to help brainstorm what the course should cover and to share the workload. The committee drafted a syllabus, which received a green light from the chair of the university’s engineering department. Then the committee needed lesson plans. Coming up with fun, yet informative lectures proved more difficult than expected. But teamwork helped get them through.

“I never realized how long it would take to create plans for students to build simple circuits,” Torous says. “But we had the entire committee doing it.”

Last on the agenda, the student branch came through with the money for supplies such as soldering irons, transistors, breadboards, and wire for the first class. The IEEE grant helped pay for those supplies for the Fall 2006 class.

Branch members take turns teaching each class. And although Torous geared the class to freshmen and sophomore electrical engineering students, the course also attracted many pursuing other majors. “We’ve had students in anthropology, history, and math,” he says.

Students first hear a 20-minute lecture about the technology behind what they will be building. Then they get step-by-step instructions on how to build their project, such as a light-sensitive nightlight that turns on only in the dark or AND and OR gates made from n-channel and p-channel MOS transistors.

“We try to take out the complexity,” Torous says.

At the end of the semester, the students get a final assignment that incorporates all that they have learned. In the spring semester, they had built a digital thermometer. This past fall, students made logic boards and programmed them to perform functions, such as turning on a light after recognizing a signal such as a temperature change.

Not only has the class made students “enthusiastic” about electrical engineering, but it’s also helped clear up confusion about the field, Torous says.

“The field has a reputation for being very mysterious, difficult, and mathematical,” Torous says. “I think we’ve succeeded in showing that electrical engineering is not that hard—and that it’s actually fun.”

Interest in the course has spread to other colleges. IEEE student branches elsewhere have contacted Torous for help starting courses of their own. For example, the UC Berkeley branch is working with Stanford University’s IEEE student branch to create a similar course there.

For more information on the course, visit http://ieee.berkeley.edu/decal.html