{"id":8446,"date":"2020-05-22T12:45:53","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T19:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about-hmc\/?p=8446"},"modified":"2025-12-09T10:06:37","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T18:06:37","slug":"spencer-featured-in-digital-engineering-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/2020\/05\/22\/spencer-featured-in-digital-engineering-magazine\/","title":{"rendered":"Spencer Featured in Digital Engineering Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Harvey Mudd engineering professor Matthew Spencer was interviewed by <em>Digital Engineering<\/em> magazine about the challenges of teaching circuit design and robotics courses remotely during the pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>In the podcast and accompanying article, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.digitalengineering247.com\/article\/harvey-mudd-college-professor-continues-teaching-robotics-in-lockdown-using-take-home-kits\">Harvey Mudd College Professor on Teaching Robotics, Circuit Design in Lockdown<\/a>, Spencer describes how he shifted his hands-on classes from in-person to remote learning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt [was] important for us to provide laboratory experiences because they are a formative part of engineering education,\u201d Spencer told <em>DE<\/em>. \u201cIt&#8217;s much harder when the students don&#8217;t have access to the hardware we usually use to do it.<\/p>\n<p>One way Spencer was able to maintain a hands-on element in his robotics course was to send Arduino kits with pre-connected electronics home with students as they were leaving campus. The kits don\u2019t require special soldering equipment at home to complete assignments.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor the circuit design class, we move from physical circuit design to simulation,\u201d Spencer told <em>DE.<\/em> \u201cThe robotics class is usually graded based on team presentation and project reports. The final delivery [was] redefined as \u201ca video for internet consumption,\u201d Spencer said.<\/p>\n<p>Along with online instruction, chat rooms and office hours, he was able to continue to focus on the core learning of the courses.<\/p>\n<p>Listen to Matthew Spencer\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/scg-de.s3.amazonaws.com\/podcast\/COVID-19%20impact%20on%20engineering%20teaching.mp3\">full interview on the <em>Digital Engineering<\/em> podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Harvey Mudd engineering professor Matthew Spencer was interviewed by Digital Engineering magazine about the challenges of teaching circuit design and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":10430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,217],"class_list":["post-8446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engineering","category-unlisted"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14935,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8446\/revisions\/14935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}