  Laboratory courses for upper-division undergraduates often involve
sophisticated equipment, relatively small class sizes, and extended hands-on
projects. These courses present distinct challenges and opportunities for the
physics education research community as these features are not often present in
other undergraduate courses. Here, we focus on an upper-division lab-based
electronics course. As a first step in establishing learning goals for
upper-division electronics, we interviewed graduate students and faculty at the
University of Colorado Boulder about the use of electronics in their own
research labs. The content-specific nature of electronics courses parallels the
hands-on experience of graduate student researchers, so focusing on the
experiences of graduate students is ideal for informing lab course reform. From
their interview responses, we developed a framework for classifying
applications of electronics. We identify five types of use and four forms of
interaction with electronics content that are consistently identified by
faculty and graduate students. However, we see variations between faculty and
graduate students regarding how electronics is learned.
