Oscilloscope training kit for EE students

Entry-level EE teaching labs consist of a variety of basic instruments including function generators, multimeters, power supplies, and scopes. Upper-level university teaching labs often include additional higher performance and specialty-type equipment. But the core instrument that students primarily use to test and document their assigned experiments in almost all teaching labs is the oscilloscope.

Unfortunately, many students never fully grasp how to use an oscilloscope. Their use-model is often one of randomly twisting knobs and pressing buttons until a picture close to what they are looking for "magically" appears on the scope's display. Less proficient students may simply rely on their lab partners to set up the scope for them. If students struggle with their test equipment—spending a significant amount of time just setting them up—they will spend less time empirically learning the theoretical concepts that experiments are suppose to teach them.

Many EE professors allocate a few hours during student's first hands-on lab class to teach them the basics of how to setup and use test equipment, as opposed to immediately jumping into assigned experiments. As a resource, some oscilloscope vendors offer and provide simple training guides centered on using either the scope's probe compenzation signal (typically 1kHz square wave) or an external training board/kit. Agilent also offers an oscilloscope training kit (option DSOXEDK) to assist in training students on what an oscilloscope is and how to use one. Agilent's oscilloscope training kit, which is different from all others, consists of three key components:
???Student's "Oscilloscope Lab Guide & Tutorial"
???Professor's "Oscilloscope Fundamentals" PowerPoint Slide-set
???11 Built-in Training Signals

View the PDF document for more information.

Originally published by Agilent Technologies at www.agilent.com as "Training EE students to use oscilloscopes effectively".