Welcome to the course Introduction
to Power Electronics. I'm Professor Robert Erickson from the University of Colorado, Boulder and the
Department of Electrical Computer and Energy Engineering. This course is available in both non-credit and
for-credit versions. It's the first course within this specialization
on power electronics. It's also the first course of our Graduate Certificate
in power electronics. It serves also as
the first course in a pathway specialization
that can allow you to gain admission into our Master
of Science Degree program. In this short video, I am going to discuss
how the credit and non-credit courses work including
enrollment and grading. It's very important. So I hope you'll watch the
video all the way through. This course uses our textbook Fundamentals of
Power Electronics. However, You don't have to buy the book to take the course. All of the material that
you need is available in the videos and in the PDF files containing
the lecture slides. While we're not able to
formally enforce prerequisites, this course is taught
at the graduate level. The basic assumption is that you are fluent in the material of circuits and electronics
at the level that it's taught in a typical undergraduate electrical
engineering degree. So as I mentioned, this
course is the first course in a specialization called Introduction
to Power Electronics. If you sign up for the for-credit
version of this course, it carries the University of
Colorado Course number ECEA 5700 and you can receive transcripted
credit for this course. The three other courses
that follow this course in the specialization
are listed here. The second course is
on converter circuits, the third is on
control of converters, and the fourth is on design
of magnetics for converters. The intent is to give you the basic technical foundation to actually build power
converters in the lab. For your information, the
specialization covers the same technical
material that we teach in our regular on campus course that's called Introduction
to Power Electronics. It's numbered ECEN 5797. We have both for-credit and non-credit versions and here's the difference between them. So you can sign up either way. If you sign up for the
non-credit version, you pay Coursera the fee
for the non-credit course. If you complete the assignments of the non-credit version, then you can earn a Coursera
certificate of completion. If you sign up for the
for-credit version, then you pay university tuition. If you complete the assignments and the examination
in that course, then you can earn transcripted
university credit that you can apply towards our campus Graduate Certificate
in power electronics and to our master of science degree in
electrical engineering. Both the non-credit and the
for-credit versions give access to the same lectures
homework assignments. Supplementary materials
and discussion forums. To get access to the exams, you need to sign up for
the for-credit version. The for-credit version also additionally gives
you access to course facilitators Also known
as teaching assistants, and they will hold office hours, regular office hours where
you can dial in remotely and talk to the
course facilitators. The non-credit version
is continuously available so you can start
and stop at any time. The for-credit version is scheduled into eight
week sessions. So once you sign up for
for-credit version, you need to finish before the eight-week session concludes. If you sign up for the
non-credit version, you can transfer if you want
into the for-credit version. You'll have to pay the
university tuition for that for-credit
version to do that. But when you do it, then any
work that you've done on the homework will
be automatically transferred into the for-credit
version of the course. We have a performance-based
admission process to our MS-EE degree program. This involves completion of the for-credit versions of the
power electronics courses, the four courses of this
specialization with a grade point average
of at least B or better throughout
those four courses. If you complete the
for-credit version, then it can be applied towards that performance based
admissions process. It can all the for-credit version can also be applied
as I mentioned, to the university
graduate certificates and towards the MS-EE degree. A little bit about changing
your enrollment status. So first of all, as I mentioned, you can switch from non-credit
to for-credit at anytime. One strategy might be to sign up for the
non-credit version, try the homeworks,
and see how they go. If you feel like you
can handle the work, then you can at that point upgrade to the
for-credit version. So to do that, you will have to pay
the university tuition for the for-credit version. But any work that you've done in the non-credit version is
automatically transferred. In the for-credit
version of the course, you can drop the
course within 14 days of enrolling and receive
a full tuition refund. When you do this, the
course then does not appear at all in your
university transcript. After the 14 days, you can still withdraw
from the course. At that point, you won't
receive a tuition refund and course will appear on your
transcript but with a greater "W" which
stands for withdrawal. The W grade does not impact
your grade point average and really doesn't mean
anything except that we're not going to issue you a grade. You can withdraw at any
time up until the point when you access the
exam of the course. Once you access the exam, then you're committed
and you'll be issued a grade on
your transcript. At the end of the
eight week session for for-credit course, your course grade is computed.
If you haven't withdrawn. So your course grade
is computed on whatever work you've entered and you will be issued a grade. I hope that if you don't
complete the class, that you would withdrawal
or drop and not just let the grade turn in automatically into an F.
That's not the goal here. So please be diligent in dropping or
withdrawing if needed. For this course ECEA 5700, there are three
homework assignments. Basically, it's one per week or whatever pace
you went to go at. You're allowed unlimited
attempts to these assignments. They are auto graded and
you can find out what your score is immediately
and try again if you like. There are also in-video quizzes. These are just for
your own edification and they're not graded. At the end of the
for-credit course, there are some examination
preparation materials. These are not in the
non-credit version, including a practice exam. This practice exam is
not graded but it has the similar conditions
to the real exam. I suggest you try it
and see how it goes. You can withdraw from
the course at any point, including after you've
done the practice exam. Then finally, we have a
proctored examination which is the one that counts. Again, this is only in the for-credit version
of the course. The proctored exam is similar to the homework assignments and
it has a similar format. The main difference is that
it's a closed book exam that it uses the proctoring service and it's a timed two-hour exam. So what you will be able to do is have unlimited
submissions to the problems within the two-hour
time period and get feedback on which
ones are right and wrong according to
the auto-grader. But when the two hours are up, then the exam is
over and it will use your last submission
as the final grade. So we have three
homework assignments. Here's how they are weighted. So 15 percent, 20
percent and 15 percent, and then the exam is
weighted 50 percent. This weighted average then determines the final
course letter grade for this course and it is all really automatic or it's machine graded. The non-credit course has the same materials as the for-credit course except
for the exam module. So it has the three
homework assignments. It has all of the lectures
and supplementary materials. To earn a Coursera
certificate of completion, you have to successfully pass all three homework
assignments and the typical passing threshold on the assignments is 70 percent. So what's on the course site? There are recorded lectures
for the entire course. There are the slides
used in each lecture, which you can download as
PDF files and follow along. There are the homework
assignments and some solved sample problems
for additional help. There are discussion forums
for each homework assignment. The first assignment relates to simulation of a
switching converter and so there are some
simulation files. You will need to be able
to run LTSpice Which is a circuit simulation program that you can download for free. The for-credit version
of the course has exam preparation materials and it has a link to the actual exam. So for the first week of class, what you should do is view
the lectures for module one. Then do homework
assignment number one, which is simulation
of a boost converter. I look forward to
your participation in the class and I hope that you find it a useful
and high quality course.