Gyraf:
Good to know you are on the other side of the classroom now, I don't know how is to teach in front of a class, an opinion on this is always useful. Too bad being seen by others is a bad thing, even if corrected is a chance to get better, not to be taken from the job because you missed something in a course. This kind of error correction, where the person who made the mistake is not punished but rewarding for showing their errors, is being applied in good companies in an attempt to get better error correction, rather than taking people who had mistakes out of the company, give the chance to correct it. About the payoff, that's why intellectual property has been made, you wouldn't call Blackmer each time you need a VCA so he design it for you...
I only tried to teach few people one at a time and mostly they say they understood what I showed at some point. I don't know how is to be standing in front a hundred people and trying to explain them at the same time, I know it will be very different. In any case I agree with you the motivation, I don't see how a test could be a motivation, when my only motivation is a test I just read few time the day before and I already forgot everything by the day after, I don't learn a thing in that case. When I see a actual application opportunity for a knowledge I probably get it much better. One idea I have but it requires a much bigger change on the system is to have a project in parallel with all courses, so each year or semester you build something putting together what you are learning in all the other courses. On first year you build a lab PS, as the usual project, on second a simple circuit to do whatever, maybe a simple AM radio or an audio preamp to use with your music, the third a multimeter, maybe a few measuring rigs, MCU project, whatever.
I don't see how to record a class and then using the recorded is more time consuming than making the lecture every single time. Live performance has the advantage than you can interrupt and ask if there is something missed, but once recorded you could polish the version adding any detail was missing originally, so probably no or few asks would been made, which could be attended in a dedicated time.
JR:
We don't have problems with loans, since here you have one of two options, the first one is completely free education, in national or regional universities. The second is payed and you pay month by month, or a year in advance if you prefer. Usually public free education is related to a higher level, but private expensive education has better hours, which are usually more comfortable for the student to work, there are some exceptions, and private education isn't always lower level, but the title from big public universities is usually more appreciated.
What I'm aiming to is the reverse process maybe, take as a starting point specifics with application notes or bench and from there learn the fundamentals, so you know what you are looking from or why you are trying to understand the fundamentals. Before starting with Hurwitz analysis you build one or two filters, tune them for specific frequency and then you do the analysis for that specific filter, then you go to the general math on the topic so you know the theory, but for the time you do that you know why you are doing so. The teaching/learning of that particular topic together with a few more about filter synthesis are covered in a few weeks, doing a lab before playing around with filters would help the student to understand why such a filter is designed. You won't get all the specifics in the first place, just a few examples or presentation to then learn the fundamentals and of course you still will need to go for application notes for anything you want to design from scratch.
I'm in a different position than most mates here, I already know why I would design a filter, but I see a lot of them saying why would I start to design a filter from an analysis like this, I'll never use this tools. I've used those tools just last week for an actual job.
I think something could be better, I see class mates than are over half of the career and hasn't build a single circuit and wouldn't know how to do so, and with a few courses more they already need to start a professional practice, doesn't looks good from the point of view of the company looking for a EE student and they find the person who comes doesn't know a thing about building a thing. It took me quite a while acquire my solder skills and looking what works better for me, but there are people who never did a single solder. I know is more important the fundamental theory to get from here but still looks like a big thing a little more practice so both, you know how to build something and you are capable of seeing why you would want to learn something. I think this could be better, I don't know exactly how, but I see a few things that seems to be wrong for me.
JS
