A study on use of mathematical programs for design of electronic circuits in cybernetic-physical learning environment

ABSTRACT

—The laboratory work holds a great importance for an undergraduate student of science. And during COVID-19 pandemic, when the theory classes were moved online, migrating practical classes to online mode turned out to be a challenging task. This article aims to study the use of mathematical programs as an extensive methodological approach to enhance the learning of electronic circuit designing at undergraduate level. The students were given a task of designing a well-known oscillator circuit using a mathematical program written in open source application Scilab. The values of all the components needed to design an oscillator were calculated. The circuit was then designed practically for various frequencies using the theoretically obtained component values. The obtained output frequency of oscillator circuit was within 5% variation to the theoretically obtained one. In this article, the authors captured the experience of 500 undergraduate science students studying at various colleges of University of Delhi, India via a valid online questionnaire circulated through different platforms. The response of the students was gauged and it could be inferred that mathematical programs are working as a decent replacement during these demanding times and can be used as an add-on, once the physical labs start operating back to normalcy. © 2021 by the authors.