Activity Report from the Signal Processing Education (SPEd) Technology Committee

Contributed by Douglas Williams (SPEd TC Liaison to eNews)

The past months have been both busy and productive for the Signal Processing Education Technical Committee (SPEd TC).  In October, SPEd TC members helped review papers for the upcoming IEEE Signal Processing Society 14^th DSP Workshop and 6^th SPE Workshop (http://www.dspe2011.org), to be held in Sedona Arizona from January 4-7, 2011.  In fact, several SPEd TC members serve as chairs for the DSPE 2011 workshop.  The SPEd TC recently nominated two renowned professors as potential IEEE Distinguished Lecturers and, with the Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP) and Sensor Array and Multichannel (SAM) TCs, jointly nominated two candidates for the IEEE Signal Processing Education Award.  Members of the SPEd TC are also working to organize conference tutorials, such as for the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP).

One of the most significant recent initiatives is the SPEd TC collaboration with Rice University’s Connexions project (http://www.cnx.org).  Through a formal evaluation process, members of the SPEd TC Connexions subcommittee identify high-quality Connexions modules that are relevant to the signal processing community.  The collection of these modules forms the endorsement lens of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. Connexions and the IEEE Signal Processing Society (http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/) have announced the release of more than one hundred free, peer-evaluated lessons that instructors can mix and match to build customized courses, textbooks and study guides. The free material is available online via the Connexions site.

"Educating its members and the broader professional and student communities continues to be a major initiative for the IEEE Signal Processing Society,” said IEEE-SPS President Mos Kaveh. “This partnership with Connexions is one exciting innovation for trusted signal processing content development and delivery.”

All materials must pass a thorough and careful peer evaluation before they appear on our society's branded portal in Connexions," said IEEE-SPS's Roxana Saint-Nom. "While quality assurance of content was a key issue for us, Connexions offers other tangible benefits for our members. Compared with traditional publishing, Connexions is much faster, has global reach, and is perfectly suited for the rapid pace of change in our field."

To view the IEEE-SPS certified material in Connexions, visit http://cnx.org/lenses/ieeesps/endorsements . If you are interested in participating in the project as an author, instructor, or evaluator, please visit the project website at http://www.ieeecnx.org/.

There are new openings for members to join the SPEd TC in 2011 and information about the SPEd TC's nominations and elections (e.g. Member Nomination Form) can be found at SPEd Members website. Self nominations are accepted. Thus persons interested to join the TC are advised to contact current technical committee members listed in the SPEd TC website.