From students and lecturers' perspectives of new online web-based simulation tools as Power Electronics facilities

Abstract

The forthcoming European Higher Education Area has implied an important change in the teaching/learning process: it is necessary to get students more involved as well as to promote their independence and active participation. Furthermore, Information and Communication Technology is progressively including greater spaces in human beings' life, as Economics, Arts, Engineering and Education, among others fields. Therefore, a web tool, based on a content management system, has been developed to teach the Power Electronics subject. Moreover, the use of these multimedia tools makes it possible to encourage students' independence. This developed educational software is necessary as an important resource in the students' teaching/learning process. Therefore, the importance of evaluation models increases in as much as the application of these instruments allows its effective evaluation. It offers a greater guarantee of its use in these environments from the students' point of view. An evaluation process, by means of several surveys for students and lecturers, is used in order to evaluate the quality of these multimedia interactive tools. The results demonstrate that the use of this web tool increases students' motivation significantly.