Development, implementation, assessment of a web-based circuit solver for teaching basic electrical circuits theory

Abstract

In this paper, an interactive web-based circuit simulator tool (CirSim) is presented to enhance students learning skills and assist them to grasp the basic concepts of the preliminary electrical engineering courses by providing innovative methods for interactive teaching and testing. The project aims to achieve the following goals: 1) Develop enhanced problem solving skills using the internet as a portable platform for the education environment. 2) Develop design skills and sharpen critical thinking. 3) Develop global and comprehensive teaching circuit tools which can be adopted nationally for educational purposes. Students can use the online circuit simulator to carry out circuit simulation on the web and access it virtually from any place. The proposed simulator provides a user friendly graphical user interface (GUI) which has the capability to allow students to conduct DC and AC circuit simulation analysis and provide the option to plot the circuit responses graphically. Finally, a preliminary study has been done on a group of students to show the effectiveness of the e-learning using the proposed web-based circuit solver on the achievement of students. The results show a great feedback from students and improved performance in learning the basic electrical engineering concepts.