Teaching Reform and Practice Using the Concept of Outcome-Based Education – A Case Study on Curriculum Design for a Microcontroller Unit Course

Abstract

Foundation and Application of Microcontroller (FAoM), a theoretically and practically important specialized course for automation majors, is interdisciplinary and has a wide range of instructional content. Conventional teaching methods center on the needs of teachers but do not prioritize fostering practical skills and innovation capacity. This split focus tends to neglect the achievement of learning outcomes and causes deficiency in practice ability. Therefore, instructional reform oriented toward outcome-based education (OBE) was proposed in this study to promote endogenous motivation to learn and enhance effectiveness and flexibility in practical teaching by subdividing instructional objectives, rearranging instructional contents, conducting modularized teaching, and formulating typical tasks. To evaluate the performance of the instructional reform based on OBE, students were engaged to develop a temperature measurement system with knowledge they learned by using software Keil, Proteus, and Altium. Statistics show that the proposed methodology exceeds the traditional method of teaching in all six evaluation indexes, achieving the student- centered curriculum objective. The implementation of the reform on FAoM is of considerable importance for students. They benefit from immersive teaching, broadening their minds and cultivating their capacity to address practical engineering problems.