Interactive Teaching for Visualizing Microscopic Actions in Semiconductor Devices

In this project, it attempts to help students to visualize the action between electrons and holes using simplified models and real life analogies. An example is the use of water vapor molecules to represent electrons and bubbles in water to represent holes. The use of analogies has been used in the current area class ELEC3500 in the existing ECE curriculum. However, the detail interactions of carriers with the change of external forces cannot be presented clearly in static schematics. Due to the limited attention span of the students, they can easily get lost once they cannot catch up with the pace of the class. It is not easy for students to re-capture the concept afterward as most of the analogies are difficult to be explained in text form. One potential solution is to video capture the lectures to let students review the concepts. But watching lecture videos can be a boring exercise as the essential part of the class may only in a particular section but students need to watch the entire class to find that out. Together with the passive and unidirectional information flow, it further deteriorates the interest of the students on the subject.