Integrating machine learning concepts into undergraduate classes
This addresses the need to prepare engineering students for industry machine learning applications, though it's an incremental educational study.
The paper compares two teaching methods (side-by-side vs. workshop) for introducing machine learning concepts to undergraduate Electrical Engineering students, finding preliminary evidence that the workshop approach may be more effective for student learning.
In this innovative practice work-in-progress paper, we compare two different methods to teach machine learning concepts to undergraduate students in Electrical Engineering. While machine learning is now being offered as a senior-level elective in several curricula, this does not mean all students are exposed to it. Exposure to the concepts and practical applications of machine learning will assist in the creation of a workforce ready to tackle problems related to machine learning, currently a hot topic in industry. Preliminary assessments indicate that this approach promotes student learning. While students prefer the proposed side-by-side teaching approach, numerical comparisons show that the workshop approach may be more effective for student learning, indicating that further work in this area is required.