| Lecturer | Dr Olav Krause |
| Course Link | UQ Site |
| Faculty | EAIT |
| Prerequisites | ELEC1000 or ENGG1300 |
| Contact Hours | 2 Lecture hours, 2 Tutorial hours, 1 Practical or Laboratory hour |
| Semester(s) Taught | Semester 1 |
| Course Units | 2 |
48.1/100
NOTE: I took this in semester 1, 2018 - but there was no option for this so I choose semester 1, 2017.
The course comes in two parts. The first few weeks of part A is pretty breezy, it is basically just a review of ENGG1300 with the addition of dependent current and voltage sources as well as a more rigorous coverage of AC power. The second half of part A covers magnetic circuits and transformers, which is a new topic. The explanation by Saha was pretty haphazard to be honest so you might need to do a bit of reading yourself. The pracs for part A were pretty reasonable. The tutor Nathan was a God-send in the pracs. The tutorials only have some questions that are assessed and are pretty easy.
The mid-semester exam is just on part A and was reasonably easy for anyone who studied properly for it. For us, it did not cover magnetic circuits or transformers, or even AC power. The exam only covered analysis of AC circuits, however they did try to slip in a question about the resonance of LC circuits that might have caught some students off guard.
There is a weird prac on solar panels that each student does only once in addition to the normal pracs. This was pretty much a waste of time and is easy marks if you prepare properly by reading the learning material they gave you. Nothing about solar power is assessed elsewhere.
Then came part B of the course, run by Chandima E (can't recall his last name). This half of the course covers diodes, bipolar-junction transistors, field-effect transistors, and circuits involving them - such as clipping circuits, clamping circuits, and amplifiers. Chandima's explanations of the semiconductor operation was pretty bad, but maybe that was just because the topic of semiconductor operation is a bit hard to cover quickly. You should probably supplement this with your own reading, or go over the lectures until you understand it. The BJT operation was the hardest to understand. Diodes and FETs are much more intuitive. He really clumsily introduced small-signal analysis without providing any motivation or context. I ended up learning a lot of the content from Nathan in the practicals.
The part B practicals were CONSISTENTLY (week after week) too long for most students to complete. Nathan was reasonable with the marking though, so I still did fine. I would suggest thoroughly doing ALL of the tutorial questions for part B, even though only some of them are assessed. It's either that, or cram them all in before the final exam.
The final exam for our year was quite different from the previous years and Chandima warned us about this. There were questions that I was unprepared for and I think if you had done all of the tutorial questions, rather than just the ones similar to previous exams, then you would have been fine. The final exam covered part A and part B but allowed you to choose some of the questions for part B at the end (we could choose between analyzing a BJT or FET amplifier I think).
The coordination of the content in part B was very poor. Some students had a practical one-hour after the lecture which explained its contents. I even did a practical where we hadn't learnt the content yet and Nathan had to teach us during the prac quickly. There was a tutorial question about clamping circuits that you would have answered incorrectly unless you had read a very specific textbook section. Most people only knew about it due to heresay. I asked Chandima on Piazza about this and he said that he just assumed that we would read the textbook along with the lectures, even though we were never told to do so! While this is pretty rich, it probably is a good idea to do that anyway.
Summary: part A was reasonable. Part B was a mess. Do the tutorial questions, especially for part B. Try to do some extra reading if you can, maybe via the textbook (there was a free pdf passed around). The final exam was a bit challenging. The pracs for part B were pretty bad but overall they were reasonably easy to pick up marks in.
You could probably skip the first few part A lectures and brush over them at home since they're similar to ENGG1300. I wouldn't skip the last few part A lectures or any of the part B lectures. In fact, I wouldn't even take notes in the lectures to be honest. Especially for part B. It's probably better to just sit there and let the content sink in as best as possible and then go over it again more thoroughly at home. In my experience, taking notes doesn't really help - it prevents you from focusing properly on trying to understand what is being told. You have all the resources on blackboard for notes later anyway.
Semester 1 - 2017
BE (Electrical)
Yes
Yes
This course, as every other Electronics course can be easy if you prepare for them. If you're not familiar with the revision work covered in the first week then you'll have a lot of problems throughout the course. Everything covered in the course is linked and you have to apply everything from first week. Its absolutely crucial that you know KCL, KVL, thevenin/norton, etc. If not then get onto it fast. The mini-assignments are quite easy and straight forward, however time consuming. But if you're having problems with the fundamentals then you won't enjoy the assignments.
The practicals were good, mainly because of the tutors. Absolutely amazing tutors. They explain everything really well, and give you practical examples. The solar PV practical is really chill and informative, don't stress it. Also something that I recommend. Try to figure out the MOST efficient and time-effective manner to do questions that come up in the assignments. The midsem/final exams require VERY GOOD time management, which is why I had trouble getting above a 5. Knowing how to do the questions isnt enough.
To give you a quick rundown on what you need to achieve an easy 5 or higher:
1) know the first weeks content like the back of your hand
2) GO to SAHAS lectures. He explains concepts and the fastest possible way to get to solutions. His methods are very effective.
3) krause has good methods as well, however I personally found faster methods from an electrical engineering book that worked for me. Keep in mind that there are multiple ways to do the questions. Figure out the ways that work for you.
4)after you did the questions, always ask yourself: "how could i do this faster?"
As a side note. The book I used was by Louis Nashelsky
Good luck and dont stress it
Semester 1 - 2016
Electrical and Biomedical Engineering
Yes
Find a textbook that works for you
This course...
Theres one good tutor holding things together and the pracs arent bad, Saha is great but krause wont put the due date on the assignments, its really not clear when the weekly assignments are due. The tutorials are the most painful thing, effectively compulsory if you want 5% of the course, sit in a room for two hours while a tutor sometimes puts up a question or solution every half an hour.
Semester 1 - 2014
Electrical engineering
While the actual course content is quite interesting, the structure and running of the course was quite poor. The single 2 hour lecture (from 4-6 on a wednesday) is just a general bad idea - there's no break during it and its pretty much impossible to be completely focused for the entirety of it. The first half of the course with Saha didn't teach anything new, it was ENGG1300 under a different light. Saha would also do all the examples and working out on the tiny whiteboards in a huge lecture theatre, you could really only see it if you were in the first few rows.
The pracs for this half were completely opposite, the content was entirely new and foreign and it didn't feel like it was taught at all - you sort of just stumbled through it during the session. Prework for it wasn't made known before the labs and only one tutor seemed to understand my questions and answer accordingly. There were more good tutors in the tutorials though, so I probably just chose a bad prac.
The second half of the course was interesting - transistors, diodes and the like. Krause would actually do the examples and working on the projector too, and his examples were helpful. However the textbook was still a much better resource for actually learning the content and examples - the lecture slides were mostly just pictures from the textbook and equations. The pracs for this half were soldering and had a little amplifier project which was a lot of fun, but again I only found one tutor that was helpful during the final testing practical.
The blackboard organisation was poor as well, it was just generally unorganized and marks for the assignments/tutorials and pracs were last updated 30/4, with the marks from 2 assignments. There have been 7. Krause had the lecture slides up before the lectures which was very useful, but often he changed them before the lecture - in fact the slides posted under "2014 slides" were just copied from "2013 slides" most of the time.
The solar PV demo was really interesting though, and the lecturer who ran that explained everything really well and interacted with the students. He was great.
You can enjoy this course more by skipping and lectures and just reading the textbook during that 2 hour block. Just don't expect to get your marks back or any feedback. The good tutors are your best resource.
Semester 1 - 2014
Electrical Engineering
ELEC2003 is a very poor course, and here is why:
Learning Materials: The lecturers put the lecture slides on the internet. And there is a textbook. This is pretty much it. You gain more from reading the textbook, than attending the lectures. There are also tutorial sheets if you REALLY can stand to look at drawings of lines for more than 5 minutes before your head explodes. So you get a very limited amount of learning materials.
Learning Activities: There is one 2 hour lecture that finishes at 6pm. Nobody can pay attention for 2 hours straight, and there isn't even a break. And it makes me miss dinner. 1/10 would not recommend. The tutorials? One 2 hour tutorial each week, and guess what, mine starts at 8am, on the same day as the lecture. Drawing it out from 8am, to 6pm. Kill me now. Again, nobody can work for 2 hours straight. Especially if it's something as boring as circuit analysis. We do get a cool project though, however the long arduous labs aren't particularly interesting either.
Blackboard Management: TERRIBLE. It's week 13, and there have only been 8 announcements on blackboard. The average amount of words per announcement is around 15, and usually only to fix mistakes on assignments, or tell us that assignments have been marked, and are now available to be (very inconveniently) picked up. The amount of effort that has gone into Blackboard is really bad. REALLY bad.
Course Content: The course content is dirt boring. But it's a compulsory subject, and essential knowledge for electrical engineering, and I appreciate this, so I'm marking it half decently.
Course Structure: There does seem to be structure evident. You never know what assignments are due, or when, but the layout of the course is easy to grasp. Mostly because you simply don't do anything cool, and the course is very simple, but admittedly, I know what I'm doing.
Contact Availability: Both these lecturers are dodgy, and very hard to get a hold of. My 4 week old email still has no reply, and it's about my marks not being recorded. I've sorted it out with tutors, but the course co-ordinator has been zero help. Just bad.
This course is bad, and needs a complete overhaul. If it wasn't compulsory, nobody in their right mind would undertake it.
Semester 1 - 2014
Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and Bachelor of Physics
Honestly just a poorly run course. Administration for this course was extremely poorly managed with marks not regularly being updated. No reminders on assessment being due other than word of mouth or if you checked the assignments folder the due date might be in the title of the document if you're lucky. Very little other communication on the details of our project. The teaching style was not personally best for me and I know a fair number of others who agree that a single 2 hour lecture with no break in the middle is not the best way for effectively communicating course material as most people do not have an attention span this long.
The lecture slides were somewhat useful but were mainly figures and paragraphs taken straight from the textbook in a different order which came across as more difficult to understand compared to the textbook itself. The tutors and the textbook are the only bastions of hope for partaking in this course as it currently is. As far as courses go this course does not come close to the standard of other courses within the engineering department that I have taken.
Semester 1 - 2014
BE(Electrical/Computer)/BSc(computer Science)