Logistics of Electronic Home-Project-Based Course

Abstract

Some educational approaches designed to replace traditional lecture-based courses are known: Active Learning, E-Learning, PBL and others. Educators in many famous universities agree that despite significant popularity of the above techniques, real-life laboratory is an obligatory requirement for the education of an electronic engineer. Although, several well-known electronic simulation-software can be successfully used as a valuable and nearly free educational tool, nevertheless students that never experienced real components may get the false impression that all cables are always good, all measurement devices are ideal and that electronic components always behave as described in the datasheet. Hence, traditional electronics laboratory with measurement equipment, electronic components and cables is still a must at least for the basic electronic courses in the first and second year of the curriculum. However, for some advanced electronic courses, an alternative organization course can be proposed: a home project-based course. During the four semesters (2016-2018), groups of 20 students each (80 in total) were involved in two elective courses of that kind: Electronic Instrumentation and Real-Time DSP. In those courses, pairs of students were asked to execute small laboratory experiments at their homes by using electronic kits provided to them by the lecturer. Additionally, they implemented at home, and presented in the class two micro-projects using both simulation software and the above kits. At the end of each semester, 25% of the students (20 in total) were interviewed about their experience in the course. Only three were unsatisfied, while the other 17 students expressed very positive attitudes toward the course. A typical citation raised by some students is: "It's my first time doing something that really works, not just a simulation or an exercise." We believe the presented method increases both the interest and the understanding level of the students.