Program Overview

This program was first conducted during the 2nd summer session during 2006 and the student response was extremely positive. This is the 2nd year that this program will be offered. It will again be offered during the 2nd summer session. The first week of the session the students will be required to attend classes at IPFW to receive an overview of Malaysia along with what to expect when in the country. This overview will cover topics as cultural does and don'ts, cultural sites and housing arrangements.

At approximately the start of 2nd week the students will fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to attend classes with their Malaysian counterparts at the University of Kuala Lumpur (UniKL). The make up of each group will be one student from IPFW and two students from UniKL. The students will housed in the faculty apartment building with two students from IPFW and two students from UniKL. The apartment is a furnished 3 bedroom apartment with cooking facilities. However students need to bring their own towels (or purchase them there).

The first week and a half will be spend learning the course material, while the rest of the course will be spent on doing a final project. While the focus of the program will be the completion of a technological project, the depth of the projects will be kept a moderate level to all the teams to focus on the dynamics of team work that involve diverse members, along with the opportunity to experience the cultural diversity of Malaysia. Students will be expected to work on the project approximately six hours on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and three hours of Friday. Wednesday and weeks will be used for cultural visits at various sites in Malaysia or to allow students free to time to explore the country. This intense period of working a single project will provide students a good exposure of what to expect upon graduation working in an industrial setting.

If a student desires to take an addition three hours of credit in cultural diversity they will be required to maintain and submit a journal of their daily activities along with an subject analysis of their experiences. .

Upon return from Malaysia each student will be required to continue working on completing their project, however they will need to use the internet to communicate with their partners that will remain in Malaysia. The primary focus at this point will be the testing of the project and completing their final project report.  Each lab team will be required to submit a final report at the conclusion of the program.

Students participating in the program would be awarded four credit hours of credit for ECET 499, Special Projects in Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology. This course will be the equivalent of ECET 305, however if a student has already taken ECET 305 then the project can be changed to a Verilog design project using the Altera Quartus development software. In that case the course content will be the equivalent of ECET 346.