ABSTRACT
The subject Electronics for Telecommunications (ET) is taught in the first semester of the Telecommunications degrees at the Castelldefels School of Telecommunications and Aerospace Engineering (EETAC). The academic performance is relatively low compared to the same course taught in a double degree of Aerospace and Telecommunications, in part justified by the large difference in the university access marks of the students between both degrees. Several actions have been implemented in courses 2019/20 and 2020/21 to address this issue, especially in theory classes where student attendance is lower than in laboratory sessions. Implementation difficulties have arisen because the presence of the COVID pandemic. Even so, performance has greatly increased, especially at the first semester of each academic year. In addition, a student survey shows a good satisfaction with the introduced actions and others in process of introduction or assessment. Some of the actions, particularly those to be applied in the theory sessions, could be easily extrapolated to other first-semester courses of the degrees. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
During the COVID-19 lockdowns in South Africa undergraduate laboratory sessions were forbidden, in turn, video-based tutorials were proposed as a tentative solution to address the lack of in-person practical demonstration sessions. Five videos were filmed on electrical engineering topics, uploaded, and then publicly shared on YouTube. An investigation was then conducted as to whether videos may be useful for the teaching of practical engineering content in the university context. This article is a report back on the findings of using YouTube as a platform for sharing and evaluating engineering educational practical tutorial videos. The gaol of this article is to introduce YouTube's social media analytics as a tool for educators to evaluate their educational videos. The findings suggest that educators may consider evaluating their videos using social media analytics, but these analytics should be reviewed critically and should comprise of several metrics measured temporally. Understanding YouTube's recommender system and its influence on the platform is also an important factor in evaluating one's video content. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Before the shutdown due to COVID-19, all courses and laboratories from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (ECE) at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) were conducted in person at the university facilities. Many of the laboratories required students to work in groups due to the limited equipment availability. Most universities were forced to adopt distance learning as a primary teaching modality when the pandemic started. Previously, the Learning Management Systems (LMS) were used mainly for support course functions, where students could review the content and grades in their own time, submit assignments, or download materials. During the pandemic time, students attended virtual sessions via video conference, reviewed materials independently, or had restricted interactions. This modality limited the ability to conduct lab experiments. The adopted lab methodologies were to offer online circuits laboratories implemented via portable equipment, designed for work at home, and acquired for the students;or by providing remote access to some university equipment. The ECE department had additional challenges because most of our students live in the border region between USA and México, and many had limited technological resources to access virtual or remote laboratories. UTEP started resuming face-to-face courses and events on campus after the pandemic acute phase period. For the fall 2021 semester, the school initiated activities under enhanced safety precautions for in-person classes. Currently, the circuits laboratory returned to face-to-face delivery mode using bench industrial-grade equipment with higher resolution and accuracy than personal devices, offering students a more comprehensive range of experiments to improve their abilities and knowledge in the technical field. However, some characteristics of the virtual model were kept, such as working at home in the preliminary laboratory phase using portable equipment and then allowing students to work individually at the university workstation, using time more efficiently, and keeping the improved LMS content. This paper compares online and in-person circuits laboratory sessions, exploring the differences, limitations, benefits, and challenges for the students and the response due to geographic restrictions. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022
ABSTRACT
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teaching has had to move from face-to-face to online models. In the context of the subject 'Home and Building Control' taught in the Electronic Engineering Bachelor Degree, an online Modbus device simulator has been developed to conduct online laboratory sessions. The simulator stablishes a Modbus TCP endpoint and a web interface for each student where they can send orders and visualize the behavior of the virtual devices under the configuration given by Modbus. The simulator was developed and used for the first time during the second half of the 2019/2020 academic year where quarantine restrictions were imposed. The simulator proved to work as expected, allowing to move all laboratory sessions to the online model. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
The access to the tools used in laboratory sessions outside official teaching hours is difficult for students. For that purpose, a remote access architecture has been deployed. The proposed solution has three main tools: a management tool developed by the authors, a web-based remote desktop application based on Apache Guacamole and a monitoring and control tool based on the Veyon software with which teachers are able to full monitor students' screens or even remote-control them. The architecture allows both remote teaching and a way for students to access lab resources from home. Even though the solution has been mainly used for the exceptional situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, these tools provide a powerful way to use learning resources in traditional teaching scenarios. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
During the period of the Covid-19 pandemic, the traditional education structure as we know it has been largely transformed due to lockdowns and social distancing. This study is a detailed description of how a normally face-to-face undergraduate course in digital design with laboratory sessions at the University of Iceland was transformed into a fully online based course. We show the essentialities required to transform the lectures and laboratory sessions from local to online. Furthermore, we compare the students' performance during the online teaching with that of previous students who participated in local teaching. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents the hybrid delivery method of a laboratory experiment at the Stability Wind Tunnel of Virginia Tech to some 170 students during April 2020, which can be considered the early stages of the COVID-19 induced lockdown. The steps of converting the hands-on labs to hybrid labs are presented in detail. Namely, a videoconferencing tool was used to (i) stream the instrumentation used, (ii) provide live video feed, and (iii) to interact with the students. Labs began with a remote tour of the facility, whilst the presence of an expert-at-a-distance added key value to the labs as it enhanced students conceptual understanding via verbal interaction. The experiments were then performed by laboratory personnel while student’s engagement was kept high via the teleconferencing session. At the end of the two-week laboratory campaign, the students provided feedback of the laboratory sessions via an open-ended and closed-ended survey. They highlighted the added value of expert-at-distance, the live video feed, and the ability of working with instructors. While their feedback was rather positive, students showed a strong preference toward hands-on laboratories. Overall, the methodologies presented here can be considered a relatively low-cost method to upgrade hands-on laboratories to hybrid or remote labs. © 2022, Advances in Engineering Education. All Rights Reserved.
ABSTRACT
The global COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the adoption of online delivery methods supported by accessible technologies, applications, and academic learning platforms. There is a larger demand for remote courses by companies, universities, and grade schools. Distance education has become one of the learning options most used by universities, where interactive learning is available. Students can also review the content of the courses on a Learning Management System (LMS) and study in their own time, supplemented with face-to-face or remote tutoring sessions in case of specific doubts. Online education is focused on learning content more than the communication between students and tutors. At the University of Texas at El Paso, Texas, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, we have additional challenges due to the USA and Mexico border's geographic location because some of our students are living in Mexico, and we are supporting them virtually. The delivery of online laboratories was implemented using remote access to the equipment in the university's physical laboratories;moreover, students acquired portable equipment designed to work at home, creating an environment similar to a real laboratory but with some limitations. Students opted for one method or another depending on vendor availability or their resources. This paper explores the differences, as well as the limitations, between the tools used for distance learning in the circuit's laboratories. As a case of study, there is a comparison between face-to-face and remote laboratory sessions and personal laboratory at home scenarios. Also, the paper describes the students' benefits and challenges and the response of students due to geographic limitations. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021