Successful engineers must be well versed in communication skills, particularly with respect to written documentation in engineering logbooks. Such logs provide technical records that facilitate the day-to-day work of individual engineers, as well as enable continuity when projects are transferred to other engineers. Due to changes in technology and patent law, as well as the promise of simple archiving and sharing of technical work, many practicing engineers have moved away from traditional bound paper engineering notebooks and have embraced electronic documentation methods. This work details the experiences of junior electrical engineering faculty members implementing electronic engineering logbooks in their courses at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. While the current literature contains some discussion of electronic logbook usage in single courses, this paper takes a broader view by reviewing the use of electronic logbooks in courses that span all aspects of the electrical engineering undergraduate curriculum, from freshman to senior year. With this diverse set of courses, the lab assignments range from prescriptive step-by-step procedures to open-ended design projects. Each faculty member has been teaching for less than six years and joined academia with several years of industry experience. This work shares their experiences and observations on the advantages and disadvantages of electronic notebooks learned through implementation in their courses. Though this paper is primarily focused on electronic notebook usage in the electrical engineering program, the general observations are applicable to a broad range of engineering disciplines.
Steven S. Holland (M ’13) was born in Chicago, IL, in 1984. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), Milwaukee, WI, in 2006, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in 2008 and 2011 respectively. From 2006 to 2011, he was a Research Assistant working in the Antennas and Propagation Laboratory (APLab), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was then a Senior Sensors Engineer with the MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA from 2011 to 2013. Since 2013 he has been an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
His research interests include ultrawideband antenna arrays, electrically small antennas, Radar systems, analog circuits, and engineering education.
Dr. Jennifer L. Bonniwell in an Associate Professor at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. She earned her BS in Electrical Engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering and her MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Marquette University. She also worked in the aerospace industry between her masters and doctoral studies.
Joshua Carl is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. He received a B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Milwaukee School of Engineering in 2005, a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Vanderbilt University in 2012, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 2016. He teaches courses in embedded systems, digital logic, dynamic systems, control systems, and circuit analysis. He can be reached at carl@msoe.edu.
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