The Eta Kappa Nu Engineering Technical Skills Seminar Series (HKNETSSS) is a sequence of tutorial sessions offered by Eta Kappa Nu, Rho chapter. Started in the Spring of 2007, this is one of our ways of giving back to the College of Engineering and filling a need by offering tutorials which cover the tools and instrumentation so necessary to the engineer.
It is not the mission of the College to offer instruction on the use of tools, but rather to provide a comprehensive education which focuses, rightly, on fundamental principles, and advanced concepts that often transcend the use of any specific tool. Nevertheless, extensive use of tools is very beneficial, and in many cases indispensable to the attainment of that deeper understanding.
Instructors generally take the view that students will, with minimal guidance, learn to use available tools as necessary to complete problems sets, lab reports, and projects. This is borne out with exprience. Were it not, the College would be awash with students floundering with MATLAB, Xilinx, Linux, oscilloscopes, and multimeters. Consider, though, the potential to improve the quality of the work produced and streamline the path to a firm grasp of conceptual content—where the real value lies—if students could get a head start in these, and similar, areas.