E-learning Distance Interactive Practical Education

01.10.2006 - 31.12.2009

Education and academia management project

So far the E-learning and Distance-learning via the Internet, is focusing on information delivery where typically multi-media rich web pages are offered to the student sitting at home in front of the computer, taking lessons in a certain subject, while keeping contact to other students and teacher via e-mail, chat-rooms, on-line tests, etc. The rapid changes in society and technology have also generated a demand for more flexible engineers having many more qualifications than just a high level of technical or scientific specialisation. The drawback of a pure theoretical approach in undergraduate electrical engineering (EE) curriculum is that there is paid less attention to the phenomena that loom by laboratory experiments and exploration of system components. The result of this, in combination with the rapid development of computer applications, is that hands-on and laboratory experience vanished and computer simulations are getting more and more attention. However it is crucial to let students have some real practice. The real experiment gives the students a sense of practical testing and they can also see the influence of the second/higher order effect, real time effects, effect of parasitic which is difficult or impossible to be simulated perfectly. The reason is that the simulation is always based on more or less simplified model. Therefore it is important to give to the students a real world experience. The proposed virtual or distance laboratory does not present any web-based simulation. It is a real electro-technical experiment conducted in the laboratory but remotely accessed, controlled and monitored by web-based tools. The experiment is either conducted online or based on recorded valued (virtual experiment). It allows students to perform experiment safely and without a guidance and official working hours in the laboratory are not limiting the users. The students can also experience the appearance of the measurement instrument, the electronic components and many more factors such as lay-out. The facility is useful for today¿s requirement of teaching in the Internet. With this new e-learning tool this technology will be applied to the basic fields of applied electrical engineering starting from fundamentals of EE, through electronics, power electronics, applications of power electronics, dynamics of electro-mechanical systems including industrial application of electrical drives, motion control and also complex drive systems will be addressed. A complete set of 18 different interactive design oriented virtual or distance laboratories will be prepared with the active participation of the educational expert. This technology will enable us to transfer results of different sectors of education and it will revolutionize education as it is today.

People

Project leader

Thomas Wolbank (E370)

Institute

E370 - Institute of Energy Systems and Electrical Drives

Grant funds

European Commission (EU) LEONARDO da Vinci Life long learning (LLP) European Commission

Keywords

German	English
praktische Ausbildung	practical training
fernstudium	e-learning

Publications

Publications