SPECIAL FOCUS PAPER PROMOTING ACTIVE LEARNING IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING BASIC STUDIES Promoting Active Learning in Electrical Engineering Basic Studies (original) (raw)
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Simple Ways so Facilitate Active Learning in Hands-on Electrical Engineering Technology Courses
2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings
The traditional way engineering and engineering technology courses are taught is based on traditional lecture and laboratory experiments, which are still the most frequent teaching methods used nowadays around the world. On the other hand, active learning methodologies grounded in scientific research in education have been attracting considerable attention over the past years with numerous research studies indicating the efficacy of such learning styles. In this article, the author addresses the main challenges and shares active learning strategies used to encourage active learning and engagement among students in face-to-face Electrical Engineering Technology (EET) courses. The implementation of active learning, cooperative learning and problem-based learning in EET hands-on courses is discussed. The assessment results have indicated that the instructional approaches used have been successful in meeting the teaching goals, which once again serves as evidence for the effectiveness of active learning as research studies have indicated.
Early Electrical Engineering Concepts Engagement in a Freshman Level Introductory Course
Proceedings of the ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual …, 2004
This paper describes a new program recently introduced to the undergraduate electrical engineering curriculum at Lamar University that allows for early engagement of fundamentals in the freshman introductory course. The department initially instituted the Infinity Project curriculum developed by Southern Methodist University (SMU), but discovered that the program was skewed towards digital signal processing. Our new program complements and subsidizes the Infinity curriculum with laboratory exercises using the National Instruments ELVIS system that introduce the student to four fundamental areas of Electrical Engineering: logic, RLC networks, amplification and electromagnetics. The purpose of this course is to effect early engagement of students into the field to enhance both recruitment and retention. Results of student satisfaction surveys as well as faculty and lab assistant experience are reported.
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An electricity and magnetism course for engineering students in the college level is described and its results on students learning are presented. The course is designed to use different research-based active-learning strategies that include not only Tutorials in Introductory Physics from the University of Washington and Peer instruction from Harvard University, but also, other strategies. All strategies are involved with an environment of collaborative learning. The assessment for learning is based on the used of the Concept Test on Electricity and Magnetism modified to include electrical circuits. Results are analyzed by normalized gain using the test as a pretest at the beginning of the course and as a posttest at the end of the course. Analysis of the test in its different concept areas using concentration analysis will be presented. Results showed that this course has a learning compared to honors classes reported in the literature.
Active Learning for Physics (Electromagnetism) Teachers in an Engineering Course
2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings, 2015
Students of Engineering have difficulties in the assimilation of the concepts explored in Electromagnetism and Waves. These difficulties begin with a lack of abstraction, especially when seeking to understand the Electromagnetism concepts. Many active learning methodologies and cases are presented in the literature for Classical Mechanics, but there are few references to Electromagnetism and Waves. This study presents a PBL-Problem Based Learning and a Project Based Learning-practice which was applied to a large class (25 students) and replicated for a thousand student universe in an annual university physics class. In the Problem Based Learning approach, each semester, four students teams received, contextualized scripts (with problems for which they were required to conduct simulations and provide conceptual analysis) (see example in the Appendix); at the end of each semester, they presented their results in an oral presentation and had an oral evaluation test. In Project Based Learning approach, at the end of the academic year, the same teams worked together on a final open project using electromagnetics concepts (project, construct, and evaluate an electromagnetic crane with open specifications) and participated in a competition. The active learning development pedagogical process was used to allow students to have a better understanding of physical phenomenon, in addition to developing scientific thought to allow for suitable modeling, simulation, and analysis, without only doing mathematical deductions with no understanding of Real Physics. The evaluation of the learning process was done using a close-and open-ended questionnaire survey completed by the students at the end of the semester. Students, using a blind process, had the opportunity to evaluate how the proposed activities allowed them to achieve a better understanding of the physical concepts, such as if this increased their motivation for engineering, if the amount of time available to solve problems was adequate, if the support provided for the development of the work (infrastructure and service teachers) was used, and any suggestions they had for improvement. The survey results revealed that the students' perception of their understanding increased, with approximately 70% of students approving of the new pedagogical proposal. This same
Interactive Lecture Demonstrations (ILDs) have been used across introductory university physics as a successful active learning (AL) strategy to improve students’ conceptual understanding. We have developed ILDs for more complex topics in our first-year electronics course. In 2006 we began developing ILDs to improve students’ conceptual understanding of Operational Amplifiers (OAs) and negative feedback in amplification circuits. The ILDs were used after traditional lecture instruction to help students consolidate their understanding. We developed a diagnostic test, to be administered to students both before and after the ILDs, as a measure of how effective the ILDs were in improving students’ understanding. We argue that an on-going critical analysis of student performance (using education research principles) is essential for improving education practice. Our analysis of student surveys, pre- and post-tests, ILD activities and final examinations, have yielded valuable feedback on how well we have designed and delivered our OA ILD interventions. During the period 2006-2013, we have found that: (a) many hours of traditional lectures do little to improve students’ conceptual understanding. (b) a few additional hours of ILDs significantly improves students’ conceptual understanding. (c) few students attend lectures consistently (either traditional or ILDs). (d) students find the concepts relating to OAs difficult, but students achieved much better scores on the OA examination question after the introduction of ILDs. (e) students recognise the learning benefits of the ILDs. Our on-going education research has driven improvements in our active learning strategy, including: (1) recognising the importance of the facilitator role in active learning. (2) using a lesson plan that is consistent with an active learning pedagogy. (3) reviewing assessment tools and learning activities so that they improve student learning. (4) redesigning ILD equipment and activities to make them simpler and clearer to understand. (5) reviewing lesson plans to make them focused on simple key concepts. The implications of using on-going education research results to refine the effectiveness of our L&T approach are clear. If we had implemented our initial ILD approach back in 2006 and continued on without the critical review that came from our own education research, we may have assumed that what we were doing was an effective AL approach. Instead, our education research results are an on-going trigger for review of, and self-reflection on, our teaching practices. Our education research gives us a quantitative measure of the success (or otherwise) of the interventions that we try in our teaching.
Measurement, 2006
This paper is an updated (August 2004) and enlarged version of a keynote lecture presented at the 2002 IMEKO TC-1 International Conference ''Education in Measurements and Instrumentation -Challenges of New Technologies'', Wroclaw, Poland, 9-10 September 2002. A completely new engineering curriculum has been progressively introduced since 2000-2001 at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium with a modern educational approach which strongly emphasises active learning based on projects and problems. The paper will, as an introductory part, present the whys, whats and hows of this revolution. An example of a multidisciplinary project at graduate level will be outlined.
An Alternative Teaching Method for Electrical Engineering Courses
IEEE Transactions on Education, 2000
The situation for engineering education is changing. Society needs an increasing number of engineers, requiring everincreasing student enrollment in engineering schools. The variety of skills that engineering students should master is also increasing. This paper describes pedagogical methods that have been adopted as a response to these needs and to the desires of both students and lecturers to achieve better learning results. A redesigned implementation of Active RF Circuits based on interactive teaching methods is described as well as the impact of these changes on student learning. The course included weekly prelecture assignments, concept tests and student seminar presentations, which lead to an ideal learning cycle. Giving the students frequent guiding feedback was found to be essential to improving student learning. The learning results were encouraging; the students were motivated and they were able to improve their communication and problem-solving skills. Most importantly, the students seemed to have achieved better learning results than with traditional lecturing. The course was targeted towards fourth-year M.Sc. engineering students, who were soon to start their final theses. This qualitative case study is classified as action research with evaluative features.
An active learning organisation: teaching projects in electrical engineering education
Journal of Statistical Software, 2004
The introduction of active learning in engineering education is often started by enthusiastic teachers or change agents. They usually encounter resistance from stakeholders such as colleagues, department boards or students. For a successful introduction these stakeholders all have to learn what active learning involves for them. This means that active learning has to take place on three levels: the students, the staff, and the organisation. These three actors have each to learn from experience, and their learning processes have to be related. Learning on the lowest level is based on the cycle of Kolb for experiential learning. If learning is seen as a form of change, similar cycles can be distinguished for learning on the levels of the staff and the organisation. On the staff level a model of Van Delden's for influencing staff members is used. For organisational change some ideas about the learning organisation from Senge are adapted to educational organisations like departments. A comprehensive view on student learning, staff development, and organisational learning is presented. The model includes four aspects of learning on three levels of educational actors and the relations among them. This model can be an illuminating guide for the introduction and/or general acceptance of active learning at your institution as a lasting change.