Making things real in electronics laboratories

Typical projects in basic electronics laboratories focus on teaching key concepts by having the students design, build and test many simple circuits. At the end of each laboratory, the circuit is disassembled. As a result, students are often frustrated as they never quite get to the level where they can design and build anything practical. We have started a new approach in our Junior year electronics laboratories. Several laboratory projects were changed to give the students the opportunity to design and build useful circuits that they then can keep and use in follow-on projects. This approach takes advantage of our "Electronic Prototyping Facility" which offers a vertical integration of advanced CAD tools with an automated printed circuit board manufacturing system. The students are able to rapidly prototype electronic systems and experience the entire design-production cycle just as they would in industry. The projects the students constructed include an adjustable power supply, a variable frequency/duty cycle clock and a linear amplifier. The details of this experiment in electronics laboratory instruction along with the promises and drawbacks are discussed.