Changes in course presentation to accommodate the "information age" and outcomes based requirements

Abstract

The "traditional" lecturing style, of presenting students with information during lectures and examining their ability to grasp and retain this information, no longer meets the outcomes for engineering graduates as required by the Engineering Council of South Africa. As a result of the outcomes based requirement and the easy access to electronic information the style of teaching, in the final Electronics and Measurement Systems courses, has been changed to a "workshop" styled system design with the responsibility left to the students to obtain the content information. Initial findings indicate that, although there was initially extreme resistance by the students at the start of the course, their self-confidence improved with better results for the particular course and the design course that it supports.