First published Dec 2002

Before July 2000, Electronic & Computer Engineering (ECE) students in Ngee Ann Polytechnic were expected to conduct experiments in the campus labs only.

Since then, however, ECE students can do their lab work anytime anywhere — thanks to the mobile Electronic Workbench (mEWB), a SGD$50 portable electronics lab kit designed and developed by lecturer Hang Kim Yam and his team of technical support officers.

As a result, Mr Hang’s team was one of the three group winners of the Dr Hiew Siew Nam’s Distinguished Academic Award in the year 2002. Mr Hang recalled:

“Before mEWB, the only times students could conduct experiments or projects were during scheduled lab times. If they needed more time to work with lab equipment, for example, for more practice, trying out ideas, or catching up on unfinished work, they have look for available lab slots. This often may not be possible, as the times when the lab is available and when the students do not have lessons do not always match.”

The Project

Mr Hang recalls:

The idea of the mEWB was conceived around the same time that the Mobile Computing Initiative was started. We recognized that the notebook was a valuable tool for students in their quest for knowledge. And we thought, ‘Why not enhance this so that our students can use it to conduct experiments anytime anywhere?’

So, in December 1999, Mr Hang and technical support officers Esther Lim, Woon Shang Tian, Kou Lip Hong, Shong Chor Hua and Lim Bee Peng set out to create a portable electronic device which, when connected to a notebook computer, can replace frequently used bench-top equipment such as an oscilloscope, a signal generator and a power supply

The development work turned out to be challenging. The team had to integrate hardware and software to produce a portable self-powered device that functions like an oscilloscope, but costs so little that every ECE student can own one. Yet such equipment usually costs several hundred or thousand dollars, for example, a dongle-like device in the market with the same performance as mEWB costs about US$300 each.

After six months of perspiration and inspiration, a successful prototype of mEWB was finally produced. Powered by two standard 9V batteries and using common electronics components such as analog-digital (A-D) and digital-analog (D-A) converters, the compact kit enables users to perform experiments anywhere and any time. The best news was: each unit costs less than S$50!

In 2000, Mr Hang and his team did a pilot run on mEWB - version 1 among 40 students who are taking the Electronic Devices and Circuits module. In July 2001, they rolled out mEWB - version 2 among all ECE freshmen with the help of more than 30 lecturers and technical support officers (TSOs).

Positive Feedback & Professional Results

The effectiveness of mEWB was confirmed by very positive feedback from separate surveys conducted in January 2001 among 27 staff and 586 students.

Experiments and projects performed using mEWBs have also yielded results identical to those obtained using expensive laboratory facilities. By 2002, two groups of final-year students have used mEWBs in their Project Design module. Two lecturers have also presented a paper in an international conference in Australia on how mEWBs can be used to support mini-projects. A TSO has used mEWB for a final-year project under an Open University Degree Programme and was awarded a distinction grade.

Latest Developments

Since the July 2002 semester, mEWB - Version 3 has been made available to students. This new version has a USB port for easier connection to almost all notebook PCs. Its scope of applications is also widened — for example, it has a general-purpose micro-computer board which students can easily adapt for use in other computer system designs.

Source: Computers as Mindtools for Schools by David Jonassen, 2000.

Background

Mr Hang Kim Yam is a lecturer with the Electronic & Computer Engineering division of the Schoool of Engineering in Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

He received his Bachelor of Science (Electrical Engineering) from the National University of Singapore and his MSc degree (Communications and Signal Processing) from the Imperial College, University of London, U.K.

Prior to joining Ngee Ann Polytechnic, he worked in the Singapore Technologies and Defence Science Organisation. In NgeeAnn, he was also engaged in consultancy projects like Real-time data acquisition system projects (Sumitomo Corporation), Visual Card (a self-service photo-card kiosk project with Coses Marketing), TalkColor (a color calibration system, also with Coses Marketing) and RoadPilot for PDAs and Handheld PCs projects (with Geo-Millenium System).