Browsing by Author "Oosthuizen, Pieter Cornelius"

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    Towards a framework for the design and development of a system for practical education in electrical engineering
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2015-12) Oosthuizen, Pieter Cornelius; Strauss, Johannes M.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Engineering. Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: How to educate undergraduate students in the practical aspects of engineering is a complex problem. To address it requires both a technical solution (referring to the equipment itself) as well as a study of education theory. The ability to apply learned scienti c knowledge in a practical way is a key tenet of engineering. Experiments are one of the principle ways whereby students learn to consolidate theory and practice. Practicals provide university students with experimenting opportunities which help to cement their theoretical knowledge as well as allowing them to gain experience working with real-world systems. However, if the equipment and systems in the laboratories are not well designed, or not designed for educational purposes, then the student becomes overwhelmed by it. In the end they learn how to use the experimental set-up itself, rather than what they are supposed to investigate with it. When we developed new practical assignments for a nal year module, we realised that the current equipment was indeed failing the students. To address this we rst considered the use of commercially available solutions. But the equipment was not able to meet our requirements | mainly because the equipment was not designed for the education environment, had proprietary interfaces and was expensive. We then set about investigating the possibility of designing a new system for engineering practical education that could better address the requirements of the laboratory, as well as overcome the limitations of the commercial equipment. We soon realised the complexity of such a proposal. Its successful execution would require a knowledge of engineering as well as of many other elds. Such a development would also require a detailed knowledge of the institution where the system is to be developed and used. But most signi cantly, the project is simply too complex for a single researcher or research group to complete alone; and nor should they. This system can have a very positive impact on both practical teaching as well as general research development, and it is only by sharing ownership that the project will progress beyond the most basic system. To realise such a large shared project, and to make it sustainable, requires a detailed development framework | that would consolidate all the various requirements, provide a clear development road map and award researchers the freedom to innovate. This exploratory study is aimed at the development of such a framework. We start by investigating current literature surrounding engineering education and laboratory systems development. We consider the current state of practical engineering at our university. (Our proposed method can also be used for other studies like this.) Furthermore, we advocate the continued development of engineering education research, presenting this study as a starting point to introduce the eld to engineering researchers. To develop requirements for the equipment itself, as well as to understand the limitations and challenges of its development, we designed three prototypes. We used solar photovoltaic practicals as an example case to limit the scope of the prototypes and help focus our endeavours. Since this is an exploratory study there is a lot of potential for future research. However, we feel that development of the framework itself should take priority as it is the key towards opening development to the broader academic community.