Providing Self-learning to Students of Highly Attended Electronics Courses through the Remote Access to a Microelectronics Laboratory

Abstract

This work, situated in the context of the Electronics curriculum of the Telecommunication Engineering Degree at the Universidad Politécnica of Madrid (UPM), seeks to widen the Electronics proficiency of the students by increasing their autonomous work through the use of self-learning activities. Learning electronics requires a strong theoretical background along with a significant amount of experimental work. However, dealing with highly attended courses implies budgeting limited laboratory resources which prevents students from developing their education on electronics totally. To cover this gap between theory and practice we have elaborated a distance learning methodology that complements analog electronics lectures with support for remote simulation of electronic circuits. This methodology is based on the elaboration of several circuit libraries that cover the most important cases explained at the theoretical courses. These libraries can be simulated employing the software resources available at the Microelectronics Design Laboratory (LDIM). We have designed and implemented a graphical remote access platform to the resources of this laboratory that is available through an Internet connection.