Proposals for New Courses

WINONA STATE UNIVERSITY PROPOSALS FOR NEW COURSES

DIRECTIONS FOR THE DEPARTMENT

This form, Proposal for New Courses, is to be used to submit course proposals for any new undergraduate or graduate course. Read the directions below for information on providing course descriptions and impact of approval on other departments. The department must include a Financial and Staffing Data Sheet and an Approval Form with this proposal. Copies of each of these forms are attached. Refer to Regulation 3-4, Policy for Changing the Curriculum, for complete information on submitting proposals for curricular changes.

Provide the following information when submitting a new course proposal.

A. Provide a description of the course. This description must include the following information.

1. Description of the course as it will appear in the WSU catalog. 2. Syllabus or course outline of the major topics, themes, subtopics, etc., to be covered in the course. This outline should be, at a minimum, a two-level outline, i.e., consisting of topics and subtopics. 3. Indicate the instructional delivery methods and course media codes used. 4. Course requirements (papers, lab work, projects, etc.) and means of evaluation. 5. List of course materials. This list may include textbooks, articles, monographs, software, etc. 6. Bibliography, including author, title, date, for a reasonable number of scholarly materials such as articles and books.

The above course description does not preclude future revisions of course content, texts used, methods of instruction and forms of evaluation.

B. Provide a rationale for the new course. The rationale should include the following item.

1. Statement of the major focus and objectives of the course. 2. Statement specifying how this course will contribute to the departmental curriculum. 3. Courses which may be dropped, if any, if this course is implemented.

C. Provide a statement of the impact of this course on other departments, programs, majors, and minors.

1. Clearly state the impact of this course on courses taught in other departments. Does this course duplicate the content of any other course? Is there an effect on prerequisites? 2. Would approval of this course change the total number of credits required by any major or minor of any department? If so, the department must indicate which departments are affected and explain carefully the effects of the course. 3. If this course has an impact on the major or minor of any other department or any program, it is the responsibility of the department submitting the course proposal to send written notification to the department(s) or program(s) affected. State clearly which other programs are affected by this proposal and whether the other departments have been notified and/or consulted.

D. If this course is also being submitted for inclusion in the University Studies Program, the form Proposal for University Studies Course and appropriate approval form must also be completed and submitted according to the instructions on that form.

Note: If any of the requested information is missing, the proposal will not be reviewed by the A2C2 Course and Program Proposal Subcommittee or the Graduate Council but will instead be returned to the department. [Revised 7-5-07]WINONA STATE UNIVERSITY PROPOSAL FOR NEW COURSES

Department: Physics Date 23 March 2010

Refer to Regulation 3-4, Policy for Changing the Curriculum, for complete information on submitting proposals for curricular changes.

Physics 321 Computerized Data Acquisition and Analysis 2.0 Course No. Course Title Credits

This proposal is for a(n) X Undergraduate Course ______Graduate Course

Applies to: X Major X Minor ______University Studies* ______Not for USP _____ Required _____ Required X Elective X Elective

Prerequisites College Physics 2 (Phys 202) or University Physics 2 (Phys 222), or permission of instructor

Grading method ______Grade only ______P/NC only X Grade and P/NC Option

Frequency of offering Every other year

*For University Studies Program course approval, the form Proposal for University Studies Courses must also be completed and submitted according to the instructions on that form.

Provide the following information:

A. Course Description

1. Catalog description.

Physics 321, Computerized Data Acquisition and Analysis. (2 S.H.) A lecture-laboratory course which teaches students how to acquire and analyze data, and control lab apparatus with a graphical computerized control system, Labview. Prerequisites: PHYS 202 or PHYS 222. Offered every two years. 2. Course outline of the major topics and subtopics (minimum of two-level outline).

The course is structured to cover the commonly used text, “Hands-on Introduction to Labview for Scientists and Engineers”, by John Essick. There are a few other texts on the market, which follow a similar schedule of topics. In the schedule below I’m assuming that a standard semester will have 15 weeks with 1-2 holidays, and thus 14*2=28 class meetings. da chapte assignment (date y r due) Topics Subtopics 1 1 Introduction to Labview Introduction/Installation 2 While Loops, waveform charts 3 2 Ch 1 For loops For loops and waveform charts 4 Example: sinusoids 5 3 Ch 2 The Mathscript node and Mathscript, debugging 6 XY graph XY clusters 7 indicators and icons 8 4 Ch 3 Data acquisition using Data Acquisition VI's 9 DAQ Data Acquisition Hardware 10 Analog inputs, Aliasing 11 Ch 4 Software and hardware timing Exam, 12 Ch 1-4 Final Project Data files and character 13 5 Assigned strings Interacting with spreadsheets 14 portability, fundamental VI's 15 6 Ch 5 Shift Registers power function, numerical integration 16 Numerical differentiation, convergence 17 7 Ch 6 The Case Structure Aplications of the Case Structure: Numerical 18 integration, partial sums. 19 8 Ch 7 The Sequence Structure Event timer using Sequence Structure 20 Event times using data dependancy 21 9 Ch 8 Analysis VI's: Curve calibrating a thermistor w/ least squares 22 Fitting data input to a VI from a panel or file 23 10 Ch 9 Analysis VI's: Fast Fourier Theory: sampling, Nyquist Freq., FFT 24 Transforms Complex Part, Applications, Leakage 25 11 Ch 10 Data Acquisition and DAQmx VI's, application: analog DC input Generation using DAQmx 26 VI's Digital Oscillascope, Automatic code 27 Incorporating State Machines Final Exam, Final 28 Project Due

3.a Instructional delivery methods utilized: (Please check all that apply). Lecture: Classroom, Laboratory

Lecture: Auditorium ITV Online Web Enhanced Web Supplemented Lecture: Classroom Service Learning Travel Study Laboratory Internship/Practicum Other: (Please indicate) 3.b. MnSCU Course media codes: (Please check all that apply). NONE None: 3. Internet 6. Independent Study 9. Web Enhanced 1. Satellite 4. ITV Sending 7. Taped 10. Web Supplemented 2. CD Rom 5. Broadcast TV 8. ITV Receiving 4. Course requirements (papers, lab work, projects, etc.) and means of evaluation.

As noted in the schedule above, there will be homework assignments at roughly weekly intervals, two exams, and a semester project. Assignments are meant to reinforce concepts discussed in the class meeting and will sometimes take the nature of labs. The exams will provide a hard measure of the amount of course content students have acquired. The final project is intended to allow students to synthesize skills from the course (and outside knowledge) to create a working experimental apparatus using Labview. I expect that the project will be one of the more valuable components of the course for a student’s long-term skill set.

5. Course materials (textbook(s), articles, etc.).

The primary text will be “Hands-on Introduction to Labview for Scientists and Engineers”, by John Essick, Oxford University Press, 2009. This is available online for about $30.

All students will be required to purchase an academic license of Labview from National Instruments for their laptops: LabVIEW Student Edition1. This software is theirs to keep after the course and costs about $80.

A few other non-required supplemental texts are mentioned in the syllabus.

6. Assessment of Outcomes

Course grades are assumed to correspond with students meeting the broad learning outcomes stated in the syllabus, reproduced here:

(a) A successful student in the course will be able to create an outline of an algorithm to solve a data analysis problem. For example ``How do you apply the idea of Least-Squares to fit a straight line to a set of X-Y data?" (b) A successful student in the course will be able to write a LabVIEW program (``vi" or ``visual-interface"), which will implement a data analysis-algorithm. For example, ``Given the outline of an algorithm, implement the algorithm in a LabVIEW program." (c) A successful student in the course will be able to create a program to control and/or read from a digital or analog electical component. For example, "Given this thermistor, create a LabVIEW program which creates a plot of temperature over time."

A student progress towards these outcomes will be measured through weekly homework sets, two comprehensive exams, and a semester project.

7. List of references. (a) A description of the Labview software package is online: http://www.ni.com/labview/. (b) A description of commercial users/applications using Labview is online: http://www.ni.com/solutions/. (c) There are lots of Physics/Engineering/Science jobs that require Labview. See this monster.com2 search, on 18 March 2010 there were 18 postings (including 1 summer internship) including the text “Labview” within 200 miles of zip code 55987. (d) There are a number of articles in the literature, which describe teaching physics with labview. Some examples from The American Journal of Physics are:

“ Advanced LabView Labs,” American Journal of Physics,” -- June 2000 -- Volume 68, Issue 6, pp. 583-584.

“ Studying collisions in the general physics laboratory with quadrature light emitting diode sensors,” American Journal of Physics -- December 2002 -- Volume 70, Issue 12, pp. 1226-1230.

“ Padé–Laplace analysis of signal averaged voltage decays obtained from a simple circuit,” American Journal of Physics -- September 2005 -- Volume 73, Issue 9, pp. 871-875.

“ Graphical computing in the undergraduate laboratory: Teaching and interfacing with LabVIEW,” American Journal of Physics -- October 2003 -- Volume 71, Issue 10, pp. 1062-1074.

“ Studying collisions in the general physics laboratory with quadrature light emitting diode sensors,” American Journal of Physics -- December 2002 -- Volume 70, Issue 12, pp. 1226-1230.

“ Contemporary electronics: A focussed concept laboratory,”American Journal of Physics -- March 2002 -- Volume 70, Issue 3, pp. 280-284.

1 http://www.ni.com/labviewse/select.htm 2 http://jobsearch.monster.com/Search.aspx?q=labview&cy=us&where=55987&rad=200&rad_units=miles

B. Rationale

1. Statement of the major focus and objectives of the course. 2. Specify how this new course contributes to the departmental curriculum.

In a general sense, Physics is concerned with creating accurate and predictive descriptions of reality. In practice, these descriptions are encoded in mathematical relationships, which physicists regularly test. Our curriculum asks students to develop these relationships (making prediction equations) and also test these relationships through taking experimental data or creating computer models of the mathematical equations and then comparing these models to experimental data.

This course directly addresses the “taking data and comparing it to theoretical predictions” stage of our curriculum. Most of the modern instruments we take data with in physics are electronics in some form or another (spectrometers for light emission, thermistors for temperature, voltage, current, etc), and building a control system to monitor these sensors and take data is a non-trivial task. The modern solution to this data acquisition, analysis, and control problem is to build a graphical computer interface with National Instrument’s Labview software program. The software can control sensors, and automates many difficult and/or tedious measurement tasks.

At a recent meeting of the Minnesota section of the American Association of Physics Teachers, I learned that nearly all of the college physics departments in Minnesota (Gustavus, St. Cloud, St. Thomas, etc) have courses which explicitly teach students hw to program in Labview and run research equipment with the software. In addition, the ability to program in Labview is skill many technical employers advertise for in their job postings. Along these lines, searches on Monster.com on in March 2010 revealed about 10-20 jobs containing “Labview” within 200 miles of WSU, Monster.com search.

To meet this need, the physics department proposes adding a 2-credit lecture/lab course in which students will learn to create labview programs in the context of setting up experimental equipment. The course will have the traditional suite of homework and exams, and will also require students to complete a long-term project that will automate data collection/control of more sophisticated equipment. We think that this sort of presentation and style of assignments will give students the additional skill set that will enable them to be competitive for a wider variety of jobs on graduation.

On a few occasions in the past 5 years our students’ undergraduate research projects have included writing Labview programs. We think that providing this course for our majors, with prerequisites that will enable them to take it as Sophomores/Juniors will make them more productive when they start working on their research project.

3. Indicate any course(s) which may be dropped if this course is approved.

No courses will be dropped, but we will probably offer this course in alternating years with Computational Physics (Physics 320), which presently runs every year with an enrollment of 6-10 students. We expect that this alternating year offering will increase enrollments in both 320 and the presently proposed course.

C. Impact of this Course on other Departments, Programs, Majors, or Minors

1. Does this course increase or decrease the total credits required by a major or minor of any other department? If so, which department(s)?

If approved, we plan to add this course as a requirement to the Physics majors. This will not put us over the 120-credit limit and will improve the quality of training for our majors. We hope and expect that students from other departments in COSE (Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, Math/Stats, and Geoscience) will take advantage of this training in advanced data acquisition and programming.

2. Attach letter(s) of understanding from impacted department(s).

Attach a Financial and Staffing Data Sheet.

Attach an Approval Form with appropriate signatures.

Department Contact Person for this Proposal:

Nathan Moore x5611 [email protected] Name (please print) Phone e-mail address

[Revised 7/5/07]