A Teaching Strategy to Promote Student Confidence and Creativity in the Design and Prototyping of Digital Electronic Systems

Abstract

This paper reports the structure, content and observed success of an innovative teaching strategy in the subject area of digital electronics that has been developed for undergraduate students of Industrial Design and Technology at Loughborough University of Technology.

The rapid and continuing expansion of the range of devices and tools available to digital electronic systems designers, especially in the area of programmable and microprocessor systems coupled with computer simulation, has prompted this change in teaching strategy. The approach adopted suggests that not all traditional aspects of digital electronics courses need to be included in an introductory syllabus, but that if a focused, limited range of knowledge and skills can be taught in depth then this may enable students to deal more effectively with open ended design situations. The main focus of the teaching programme is a series of lectures and laboratory sessions dealing with the organization, characteristics and applications of the UV erasable EPROM (Electrically Programmable Read Only Memory). The teaching programme seeks to engage students in a systems approach to design, whilst providing a narrow but deep spline of knowledge to facilitate confident design decision making. In this way, student confidence is promoted during the module. Later in the course, students are provided with an opportunity to practice creative technological design through engagement in the design and development of solutions to client based industrial projects. The extent to which the taught knowledge base has been utilized and a systems design strategy adopted in this later project work has been used as a tangible indicator of the success of the teaching programme.