Typically authors of academic text books wanted their works to be considered the definitive reference for electrical engineering students and working engineers. Educational research has shown that humans retain as little as 10% of what they hear someone else tell them, but retain as much as 90% of what they learn by doing. Today, while students are computer-savvy, they exhibit a diminished attention span, and have multiple demands on their time. As a result, students have less “gut intuition” than prior generations possessed when entering the job market. Gone are the days when students entering college were ham radio operators, played with Erector sets and had tinkered extensively with electronic kits or simply taken things apart. One well known example is that interest in electronics as a hobby in the 1970s led to the creation of the personal computer.Īlthough they are extremely computer literate, today's engineering students frequently enter college without the same level of hands-on “tinkering” with hardware that prior generations exhibited. Interest peaked in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, with the invention of solid state devices, the transistor radio, the launch of NASA, and the educational push in math and science to win the space race.

Broad interest in electronics started in the early 1900s with the introduction of radio communication and later broadcasting.

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