Abstract:

Nowadays, the greatest challenge for the university staff is to attract the students’ attention on the topics studied in the courses. That is why the lectures in the universities need to apply innovative ideas making the classroom experience much more attractive to the students, such as creative teaching, audio and video tools, “real-world” learning, role play, working together as a team, etc.

The paper presents solutions for making the courses in digital electronics in the University of Ruse more attractive and more effective in the final assessment of the students.

The courses “Digital Circuits”, “Pulse and Digital Circuits” and “Pulse and Digital Devices” introduce the students-bachelors of the specialties “Computer Systems and Technologies”, “Electronics”, “Internet and Mobile Communications”, “Computer Control and Automation”, and “Information and Communication Technologies” in the University of Ruse to the main topics in the field of digital electronics. For the purposes of these courses a laboratory board based on Spartan-6 FPGA was developed at the University of Ruse "Angel Kanchev". Complex combinational functions may be implemented by configuring the logic blocks in FPGAs. Different combinational circuits such as diversified arithmetic circuits (half-adders, adders, multistage combinational adders and subtractors), encoders and decoders, multiplexers and demultiplexers, code converters and comparators are studied in these courses. One of the topics covered in the courses is “Synthesis and analysis of arithmetic circuits for subtraction”.

The paper presents FPGA implementation of half subtractors, full subtractors and multi-bit subtractors on the laboratory board and a way of presenting this topic to the students making the classes m+ore attractive using active learning methods.

Creative teaching uses tools for stimulating creativity. Including visual exercises with the laboratory board excites students’ minds and captures their interest. This is a time-tested method for identifying student’s creative abilities and encouraging creative contributions.
Incorporating audio-visual materials to supplement textbooks during the classes, for example laboratory boards, movies, pictures, helps the students’ imagination grow. These methods also help the students understand the concepts better.

Demonstrating through real-life situations using the laboratory board makes the material easy to understand and easy to learn.

Teaching through role playing is a great way to make students step out of their comfort zone and develop their interpersonal skills. After determining the type of the devices implemented on the board, each of the students must find information in Internet about a specific device and to present the information to your colleagues playing a role of the teacher. The role playing method helps the students understand how the academic material is relevant to their everyday practical tasks.

Working together as a team during the classes also encourages the students to learn and think better, and of course, the end result of the collaborative effort is always immense.

Therefore, active learning methods engage students in learning, using activities such as reading, writing, discussion, or problem solving, and promotes analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of the class content. Active learning methods used during the classes also provides students with informal opportunities for feedback on how well they understood the material.

Keywords:

Teaching and learning, active learning, digital electronics, arithmetic circuits, subtractors, FPGA, Xilinx.