Teaching circuits to non-electrical engineering students has always been a challenging task since many of these students find the circuit theory difficult, abstract and unrewarding. This can be partly associated with the fact that oftentimes the first circuit course that is offered to non-electrical engineering students, i.e. "Circuits I", is the same as the one offered to electrical engineering students. While in Circuits I students learn about the basic circuit theory, many of them especially those from engineering disciplines other than electrical engineering, may find the specific arrangement of the circuits elements in most of the circuits that they study, random and arbitrary. Consequently, they do not appreciate the importance and applications of the theory which is taught to them and thus lose their interest in circuits. A good opportunity to win back students' interest in learning circuits, is the second circuit course which for non-electrical engineering students can be an introduction to electronic circuits and systems. In this research experiment, we have designed a new application-oriented course which provides non-electrical engineering students with insight in the application and role of circuits in larger systems. Considering that most of the non-electrical engineering students need to learn how to build circuits for instrumentation applications [1-6], the course is structured to be about different building blocks of a practical measurement system. The availability of Arduino-based boards such Teensy 3.2 which are extremely easy to work with, provides the opportunity to have the students work on the full chain of blocks in a sensor system and build a circuit that completes a meaningful task. Moreover, the adoption of National Instruments VirtuaiBench, facilitates a more efficient measurement experience in the laboratory.
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