Every good Boilermaker should be in training— model trains, that is,
according to Purdue professor “Dr. Dave” Meyer.
“They embody key aspects of engineering—the physics
of motion; mechanical engineering concepts of linkages, drive systems, and gear
ratios/torque; basic electrical engineering concepts of voltage, current,
power, resistance, transformers, diodes, motors, and lights; digital signal
processing techniques for generating sound effects; computer engineering
application of digital command control and embedded microcontrollers; civil
engineering principles involved in the design of scale structures and bridges;
and construction engineering principles involved in building a layout. If parents want their kids to aspire to be
future engineers, one of the best gifts they can give them is a toy train set, along
with 4x8 sheet of plywood,” he says.
The Electrical and Computer
Engineering professor—who still has the first toy train set he received over 50
years ago and has been a Boilermaker since coming to campus as a freshman in
1969—uses toy trains along with other everyday electronic devices as examples of
engineering practice.
“I use anything and everything I can
get my hands on to make lectures and labs as interesting and useful as possible,”
says Meyer, who earned his bachelor’s, two master’s,
and doctorate at Purdue, then joined the faculty 26 years ago.
“Students like practical, hands-on learning. They
want to see things work,” he says. “Building a project from the ground
up—that’s when students start to blossom and understand what we’re teaching and
why the material is important.”
Meyer’s style is to combine humor and popular icons,
such as Sponge Bob and Simon Cowell (who may actually
be related), to maintain students’ interest during lectures, says Brian
Moerdyk, who was a graduate teaching assistant under Meyer. “I learned from him
that lecture material should never be considered constant. While changes are
necessary to keep up with evolving technology, it is also necessary to evolve
lectures to keep up with students’ changing needs.”
It’s effective. Meyer has landed 20
teaching awards, some student-selected. They include the Dean A.A. Potter Award,
Purdue Book of Great Teachers, Eta Kappa Nu C. Holmes
MacDonald Outstanding Teaching Award, ASEE Fred Merryfield Design Award for Excellence in Teaching Engineering
Design, IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award, and IEEE Computer Society Undergraduate
Teaching Award.
The secret to his success is
constant pursuit of new and better ways to teach, accompanied by a lack of fear
to “try anything once.” One educational
research project currently underway involves offering two core computer
engineering courses in parallel formats: traditional lecture and inverted, where the lecture content is
delivered on-line and the face-to-face class meetings are used for directed problem solving sessions. “In addition to optimizing the teaching
environment for different styles of learners, the opportunity to choose between
two ‘opposite’ course formats forces students to think about how they best
learn,” he says.
Other educational research projects currently
underway include use of peer-rated on-line discussion threads and student
response units (“clickers”). Another
recently funded project involves use of Tablet PCs to improve laboratory
notebooks in his Digital Systems Senior
Design course. Meyer has also
worked extensively on best practices for outcome assessment and capstone
design. Results of this work, as well as
links to all the instructional materials Meyer has developed, can be found on
his home page (http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~meyer).
Meyer grew up in
This fall, he’ll teach courses at the freshman
through senior level, including a new service-learning based course on sound
reinforcement system design (his favorite subject). In his spare time, he’ll work on his hobby—creating
a computer-controlled model train layout (complete with digital sound effects)
in his basement.
Originally written by Kathy
Mayer for ECE Impact, August 2007