An Enhanced Course in Digital Communications

Abstract

Today technological improvements provide several alternatives and opportunities for improving traditional educational systems. However, integrating these technologies in an appropriate and successful way into the curriculum of traditional systems is a challenge. This work presents the enhancements added to an undergraduate course on Digital Communications which is an introductory course offered to senior undergraduates or first year graduate students. The Digital Communications course covers some essential stages in a typical digital communication system, namely, signal formatting such as analog to digital conversion, baseband modulation and bandpass modulation by concentrating on demodulation and detection at the receiver end. The enhancements include computer simulations, web-based simulation tools and remote laboratory experiments along with several out of class activities. The enhancements have improved the course significantly by supporting constructivist and blended learning methods. The improvement to the course was demonstrated over two years, from the student progress assessed from the collated results of the student evaluation forms and a questionnaire on the course learning outcomes, and a comparison of their performance in the written exams. The results show that there is a significant improvement both in the progress and satisfaction of the students on the enhanced course curriculum. This study shows how different technologies have been successfully integrated to the curriculum of Digital Communications course in a higher education organization and concludes its success factors.