[jp1390]

Well, to be honest I found that this was a good introductory circuit analysis course taught by Dr. Xu. Most had trouble with this course because of Xu's accent but after a couple lectures I got used to it. He was a good professor and knew his stuff but again, most found his accent hard to understand. This was pretty much just a circuit analysis course going over Ohm's Law, Kirchoff's Current/Voltage Laws, and the use of Nodal and Mesh circuit analyses.

Depending on what you covered previously, some new stuff that you will deal with includes: Transient Response circuits (capacitors and inductors as sources), network theorems, dependant sources, AC circuits utilizing phasor notation and the frequency domain, op amps, filters, and a tiny bit of digital logic stuff.

Another issue with this course was due to timing of lecture material and labs. The prof would take great care in making sure concepts were fully understood but ended up being behind in teaching us material for the labs. So, unfortunately for the lab groups in the first half of the week, they would be going into the labs with a tiny idea of what they would be going into. Thankfully, Glen the lab coordinator was pretty helpful and would help set-up your circuits, if needed.

Mark Breakdown

Labs - 25%
Quizzes - 10%
Midterm - 10%
Final - 55%

*Having to obtain at least a 50% in the lab section to pass*

There were three or four in-class quizzes with one of them being the midterm (hardly...), and they were all very simple, consisting of one or two circuits asking for some voltages or currents.

There was a tutorial once every month (usually...), which took the place of a lecture. They went over practice questions and help with the simulation software PSpice.

The textbook used was "Fundamentals of Electric Circuits" by Charles K. Alexander and Matthew N.O. Sadiku. I found it very helpful and there were plenty of practice problems in there to build a greater understanding.

Most were caught off guard by the ease of the quizzes and thought the final would be the same but it was more intuitive than the quizzes, but not a struggle. All in all, this course was a good introduction for electrical circuits but I would have liked more time management on the professor's part for lab and lecture material coordination because at the very end of the term the digital circuits section of the course was so rushed and the labs were not very relevant.