Looking for course - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: stackover
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: February 02, 2021, 10:31:17 pm
content: Hey guys,I've always wanted to do electrical engineering, but I'm really not a maths savvy person, as such I'm looking at doing a bridging course I hope will help. Has anyone here done a bridging course to get into EE?I'm trying to figure out what some stuff I should attempt to touch up on before going in, so I don't just confuse myself instantly.Being a bridging course, I'd think it would cater for people that maybe didn't do any highschool maths at all, or have simply forgotten heaps of it. I finished highschool, so even after 1 year my maths skills are pretty rusty (If they weren't always).A friend who is in his 2nd year of EE at the moment says the bridging courses will cover pretty much everything, but it'll be very fast paced.Just looking for some adviceTnksStack--Link removed by moderator

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2021, 10:58:58 pm
content: You might start by looking at Khan Acadamy, it's free and has a lot of really good courses. You won't get credit but you can get pretty much a full college education from there.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 03, 2021, 06:29:36 pm
content: Basically you will be taken into calculus and be learning Fourier transforms and have to use mathematical tools such as Laplace transforms. Really it's all about the quality of the course. I have done a UK HNC which is supposed to be year 1 of university, I am now on my HND which is year 2. My course has been awful, littered with errors and typo's which are no help when the information is often vague and it is assumed that you have more prior knowledge than you do.Unless your course is going to give you some really good material I would get some maths texts books as they will help throughout your course when to explain electronics they use math that you were not thoroughly taught or want to brush up on or you may want to expand your knowledge a bit beyond the minimum maths to help you understand better.

author: penfold
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2021, 02:03:48 am
content: I'm not familiar with the term 'bridging course', I am assuming it would be like a 'foundation year' common in the UK, feel free to correct me!To give you an example, of 4 of my longest standing EE friends, one started with a HND (vocational qualification) and began his career as a service engineer and did his degree later in life, one did a degree through the 'normal' route and then worked as an electrician for many years before working formally as an EE, one started his degree later in life via a foundation year and finally I was thoroughly conventional all the way through. The moral of the story is that these were the guys I shared an office with as a PhD student, we all passed, all now work as well paid consultants, and nobody's background has held them back in any way.I worked as a teaching assistant whilst I was a PhD student so I spoke to loads of undergrad students who went through foundation years and non-conventional academic backgrounds and I still keep in touch with colleagues who teach courses on foundation years... so that's where my knowledge of the courses comes from..The foundation years are 'intense' in that there's normally a very diverse range of courses/modules from maths/physics/chemistry topics and a big 'culture shock' for many students suddenly adjusting to university life and the expectation to be much more self sufficient then before... but they have an absolutely massive advantage that they are taught with the knowledge of the degree/further/higher qualification you'll be going on to so the lecturers do tend to put some real applications to the maths which definitely benefits students who are more practically focused and don't enjoy the abstract side of maths. Honestly the students who went through foundation year route were so much better prepared for the first year degree than the 'normal' route students! (I'm certainly including myself in the less prepared, I really began to wish I did a foundation year).Don't be put off EE because of the maths, yes there is a lot of it, but it doesn't feel so much like maths when you're learning some applications along with the fundamental stuff. I left high school absolutely detesting maths vowing never to have anything to do with it again, 6 years later my 4th year EE module choices included 2 maths-masters level maths modules (and I actually enjoyed them!).

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 04, 2021, 08:03:07 am
content: A bridging course or module is common. When I started my HNC they mandated that I did a maths bridging module as I did not have a similar qualification in an engineering or scientific subject.In reality the bridging module was a waste of time as it was just a lighter tough version or the first module of the HNC which was the same maths to a slightly more complex degree.

author: penfold
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 04, 2021, 12:22:45 pm
content: I'd still suggest however that its worth that the OP investigates the target course. EE courses (particularly degrees) do vary massively between institutions and countries.Just as an example, I've found thishttp://engmaths.group.shef.ac.uk/mas156/#courseinfowhich has pdf's of the course materials for the first year EE maths modules from The University of Sheffield, UK.Typical first year text books would be Modern Engineering Mathematics (Glyn James) or Engineering Mathematics (K. A. Stroud).The electronics part of the first year itself shouldn't need a huge understanding of maths to get going with, linear algebra and complex numbers helps with the circuit analysis, but its only really just addition, multiplication etc the most challenging part is normally keeping track of negative signs knowing when you've got enough variables in simultaneous equations.