EC ENGR 3
Introduction to Electrical Engineering
Description: Lecture, two hours; laboratory, two hours; outside study, eight hours. Introduction to field of electrical engineering. Basic circuits techniques with application to explanation of electrical engineering inventions such as telecommunications, electrical grid, automatic computing and control, and enabling device technology. Research frontiers of electrical engineering. Introduction to measurement and design of electrical circuits. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2021 - One aspect of this class that other reviewers might've forgotten about is that this class is extremely front loaded. The first few weeks are a *lot* of work. You have to take a quiz at 8 AM, watch the lecture, do the extremely challenging homework assignment, do a prelab, then a lab every single week for the first 4 weeks. However, after the first 4 weeks, it gets significantly easier. There are no longer required labs and prelabs meaning you only have the quiz and the homework to worry about each week. You get 5-6 weeks to work on the car although you could reasonably do the project within a week and over a 3-day weekend if you really have to cram it. Near the last 1-2 weeks, he dropped the homework and quizzes entirely to allow us to work on our cars which meant the workload became extremely light/next to none near the end. That being said, I think class is too difficult for this to be an effective intro to EE. I don't mean this gading-wise as there is significant opportunity for extra credit and you will likely get an A even if you fail the quizzes, but the pacing is too fast for someone who has never done node voltage analysis, Thevenin's theorem, or other analog EE stuff before. For a CS analogy, it'd be like going from a "Hello world" on the first day to writing multithreaded programs by week 4. It's just too much too quickly for the first few weeks. Because of how quick the pacing is and how difficult the quizzes and homeworks are, it's reasonable that you might end up disliking EE altogether because you just get thrown into this. The professor and the TAs themselves are actually quite nice and there are plenty of opportunities for office hours. He even gives you his phone number so you can literally text him for help outside of office hours or lecture if you need it. The homework is extremely challenging even though it's only one problem a week and you will need it to do it with a study group and/or get help from OH for it. The lectures are fine although he does not usually do worked examples of problems so it's hard to understand new techniques he introduces without seeing him work through it. He does talk slowly during the lectures so if there is an option of watching the recorded version, I'd opt for that instead. The final project is not too bad and the report is quite short (around 1-2 pages) so you get a lot of time to do it. TL;DR Nice, helpful professor; class is front-loaded, goes from hard to easy; grading is easy but the pacing is too quick and the material is just dumped on you; final project isn't too bad and you get a lot of time for it.
Spring 2021 - One aspect of this class that other reviewers might've forgotten about is that this class is extremely front loaded. The first few weeks are a *lot* of work. You have to take a quiz at 8 AM, watch the lecture, do the extremely challenging homework assignment, do a prelab, then a lab every single week for the first 4 weeks. However, after the first 4 weeks, it gets significantly easier. There are no longer required labs and prelabs meaning you only have the quiz and the homework to worry about each week. You get 5-6 weeks to work on the car although you could reasonably do the project within a week and over a 3-day weekend if you really have to cram it. Near the last 1-2 weeks, he dropped the homework and quizzes entirely to allow us to work on our cars which meant the workload became extremely light/next to none near the end. That being said, I think class is too difficult for this to be an effective intro to EE. I don't mean this gading-wise as there is significant opportunity for extra credit and you will likely get an A even if you fail the quizzes, but the pacing is too fast for someone who has never done node voltage analysis, Thevenin's theorem, or other analog EE stuff before. For a CS analogy, it'd be like going from a "Hello world" on the first day to writing multithreaded programs by week 4. It's just too much too quickly for the first few weeks. Because of how quick the pacing is and how difficult the quizzes and homeworks are, it's reasonable that you might end up disliking EE altogether because you just get thrown into this. The professor and the TAs themselves are actually quite nice and there are plenty of opportunities for office hours. He even gives you his phone number so you can literally text him for help outside of office hours or lecture if you need it. The homework is extremely challenging even though it's only one problem a week and you will need it to do it with a study group and/or get help from OH for it. The lectures are fine although he does not usually do worked examples of problems so it's hard to understand new techniques he introduces without seeing him work through it. He does talk slowly during the lectures so if there is an option of watching the recorded version, I'd opt for that instead. The final project is not too bad and the report is quite short (around 1-2 pages) so you get a lot of time to do it. TL;DR Nice, helpful professor; class is front-loaded, goes from hard to easy; grading is easy but the pacing is too quick and the material is just dumped on you; final project isn't too bad and you get a lot of time for it.
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Most Helpful Review
He really sucks. His lectures consist of him copying the useless slides he posts on courseweb. Homeworks are poorly written and filled with mistakes. His formulas are incredibly sloppy, making it very difficult to follow what he is doing. The material in the class is not difficult, it is just hard to learn anything from this professor in particular.
He really sucks. His lectures consist of him copying the useless slides he posts on courseweb. Homeworks are poorly written and filled with mistakes. His formulas are incredibly sloppy, making it very difficult to follow what he is doing. The material in the class is not difficult, it is just hard to learn anything from this professor in particular.
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