Is anyone in the PLC class and have graduate students as professors?... Pretty lousy.

The lecture:
If I wanted to hear projector slides read aloud, I can do that myself. That's about all the lecture's good for. I'm pretty much teaching myself in there...

The lab:
A really cool lab, but again, the TA stinks. He basically said 'have at it' and didn't do an introduction or explanation or anything. We're laying eyes on a PLC for the first time ever, and he's basically no help at all. Meanwhile, he, too, sits and plays computer games while the class works.

- What a joke. You'd think a junior/senior class would be taught by the actual Phd professors, but no, once again the EE department fails at teaching students the right way.

In conclusion, if you want a class you can teach yourself, I recommend EE 235.

I'm assuming you have Harding on T&Th for the lecture. Obviously you don't pay attention to the fact that there are case studies and slides you have to fill out. If you don't understand something, how about you try talking to him after class or ask questions, he is very nice and helpful. If you don't have questions, then imagine that, it is easy and boring material and right now we are covering the most basic of the basic. PLCs are not all that exciting or difficult, you just have to learn the notation.

As for the lab I assume you have it on Monday afternoons. Erickson specifically designed the lab as a "try and do" lab. From what I've heard it is the most educational lab in the curriculum because you have to figure a lot of it out yourself. You're supposed to be trying to become an engineer for cripes sake. Congratulations you are likely a junior or a senior in the EE program by now, act like it. Don't ask for your hand to be held. The manual is pretty explicit about how to open and configure RSLogix and begin using the program. If you need help, thats what he is there for.

I have had many classes I have been poorly poorly disappointed about the quality of teaching (IE Linear systems with Grant), but this is a simple class. We would be wasting our tuition money to pay a PhD to teach it.

Moral of the story, Man up or drop out.

i loved PLCs, the lecture was boring as shit but I can't say it was more than marginally more boring than any other. The lab was great, it was frustrating at first not knowing the system, but after you get through that its becomes a very rewarding problem solving class.

I suggest you drop out.

and then kill yourself

I was really trying hard not to say anything. I honestly was.

I'm in it right now. I'm an ME major. I've had EE 281. That's it. Granted, yes, I rewired my motorcycle from bare bones and implemented some simple relay logic when I did it. Maybe I have a knack for this stuff. But even if you don't, it's not that hard to pick up. It's dead simple. You're wiring lights to switches.

Believe it or not, they teach this stuff to two-year tech school students. LINN TECH KIDS. And *shock* they can't even do calculus "waaaaaaaaah!" Why are you concerned that your engineering professors trust you enough to pick this information up by reading the well-written documentation and battling your way through a few well-written laboratories?

The ME curriculum has a 1-hour lab course which covers PLCs 1 day a week for 8 weeks. There's no lecture, it's all labs. You start the big project the first day. And it's taught by *gasp* FIRST YEAR MASTER'S STUDENTS. Taught, hell, you're given a lab manual with a few ladder logic basics and thrown into the woods. With this EE course under my belt, when I start that lab the 2nd week of March, we should be done by St. Pats.

The introduction to the PLCs book tells you that there's nothing in there that requires a college degree to pick it up.

And the Linn Tech instructors? They're not PhDs.