When Professor Kendall Farnham agreed to Online With a master of computer engineering engineering from Dartmouth, she knew it wasn’t easy.
“When I can’t lift my shoulders and tell you how we can facilitate learning with desktop hardware when I can’t lift my shoulders and tell you how you plug something backward, which is why it’s smoking?” she laughed.
But for Farnham, the challenge is not a deterrent, it is an opportunity. Her mission: to make the online experience of the hardware as eye-catching and hands-on as the face-to-face version. It’s a creative, firm energy to define the program and her philosophy of engineering education.
From software to hardware, return
Farnham’s path back to Dartmouth (she earned an undergraduate engineering degree) is not traditional. She started working in software sales since SAP, but soon realized that she was going wrong. “Sales are not for me,” she said. So despite not having a formal software background, she turned to software engineering. “I think it’s like a computer,” she said simply.
After three and a half years as a software engineer, Dartmouth’s fate recruiting trip completely spins her road. A conversation with engineering professor Petra Bonfert-Taylor sparked the idea in graduate school. “She told me, ‘You’re getting old,'” Farnham joked. “I didn’t realize I was an ancient fossil of 26 years old, but honestly, it was life-changing.”
She returned to her PhD, received a NASA scholarship, and established a medical system on FPGA (field programmable gate array). When she realized Dartmouth didn’t offer graduate-level FPGA programs? She built one. “I told my consultants that this type is certainly missing, and they said, ‘Great, go teach it.’”
That mentality and personal motto is “learning, teaching it, breaking it, fixing it”, which has defined her teaching style.
Professor Hardware Online: Break and Build, Together
Just after defending her PhD in February 2024, Farnham is eager to enter the academic world, a path she never thought of. But she initially panicked when she was told that the course would be taught online. She thought, “This is impossible. The hardware is too difficult! How will we do this online?”
She is determined to figure out how to bring the hands-on aspect of in-person learning to an online environment. Her online teaching method stems from trial, error and collaboration. “My teaching style is: teach for 20 to 30 minutes and then do it. If you do it and fail, you will learn.” So, achieving this in an online environment is her task.
Farnham learned that not everyone learns the same way and is keen to make sure her teaching methods are attractive and clear. She recorded the video, not only showing What,but Why and how:
“I said to myself, that’s how I think about the problem, it’s a logical process. Your process may be different, but it’s my methodology.”
Collaboration in an online environment
So, how do you bring this iterative, hands-on energy into an online environment?
“I used Slack to pretend we were in the computer lab,” she explained. “Screenshots, threads and questions are all very effective. Nothing is a stupid question, and the students help each other.”
Despite being formally asynchronous, every online Dartmouth course can be pointed out that there are two optional synchronous meetings per week. For Farnham’s FPGA courses, these courses are very popular.
For hardware courses in the course, Dartmouth also ships the physics kit to each student’s home so that learning can be truly hands-on.
Farnham combines documentation, hardware-CAM demonstrations, whiteboard explanations, and even struggles to play for something in her instructions. “Basically, I’m thinking about how to give you this information in every possible way. Whatever you click, click.”
She herself is a recent student and she is also very meticulous about the type of material she provides to her students.
“I’ll record a teaching video and always watch it. If I’m watching it bored, I’ll re-record it and try to find ways to make it more interesting. If I don’t want to watch it, why do you want it?”
Dartmouth’s Difference: Learning and Learning
Farnham said what makes Dartmouth’s online men in computer engineering so powerful, not just content. This is a mentality.
“The truth is, technology changes so quickly. The gold standard you learn today may not be the standard within 12 months. We teach you how to do it studyand how to continue learning. ”
From hands-on FPGA to the concept of machine vision, the program’s projects are directly linked to real-world industry challenges. “In the FPGA course, we have learners applying their projects directly to their work. That’s the goal: make it practical.” The course aims to have use cases in a wide range of industries.
Now she begins her new Machine Vision course, where she takes students to conduct weekly case studies in areas such as underwater robotics, agriculture and aerospace. “The Mars rover is built on an FPGA. You start with the camera and ask: How do you communicate data? What is the mechanical challenge? You can plug it into any industry.”
Her goal is to make every student an effective learner and communicator. “You can be a very smart engineer, but if you can’t communicate designs, you may not be an engineer either. Engineering affects everything; you can’t work in a silo.”
Suggestions for future engineers: Curious. adventure.
Farnham never thought he would become a professor. “I need to make changes at work and want to expand to hardware. I know a lot of people are completely hub because they learn something new, and that’s what I do,” she said. But now she’s “lifelong” in Dartmouth and is passionate about expanding access to engineering education.
“If you’re curious about something else outside of the direct bubble, explore it,” she said. “If you’re thinking about grad school and not sure why, but something is attracting you, try it. What do you have to lose?”
Her advice? open. Stay adaptable. “Planning is good, but don’t associate it with planning. You may learn something new and hub-to-peer. That’s engineering. It’s a problem of solving problems, rethinking and iterating. Just like life.”
Are you ready for the next step?
If you are curious, ambitious, and eager to understand how things work and how to better make them better with smart systems, a master of online computer engineering in Dartmouth might be your next step. With professors like Kendall Farnham, you don’t just learn hardware. You will learn how to learn, think and communicate, 100% online, hands-on and go straight to the future.
