Abstract:

Nowadays, the greatest provocation for university educators is to increase the students’ attention to the topics studied in the course. This requires applying innovative ideas by the lecturers in the universities for making the classroom experience more attractive to the students. Such innovative ideas are creative teaching, audio, and video tools, “real-world” learning, working in teams on projects, etc. The paper presents the active learning strategies used in the course "Digital Signal Processing" for increasing students' motivation in learning this course.

The purpose of the training in the course "Digital Signal Processing", included as mandatory in the curriculum of the specialty "Information and Communication Technologies", educational qualification degree "Bachelor", is to acquaint students with the main issues of theory and practice of digital signal processing. The lecture material focuses on the hardware and software for digital signal processing. One of the basic topics in the course is "Generation of Signals Using MATLAB". The aim of the topic is for students to learn to apply MATLAB for the generation and elementary processing of signals. The main types of sequences that are used in the theory of digital signals and systems are generated. During the classes, each student receives an individual assignment in which he/she must generate a sawtooth signal, a composite signal of two sinusoids, mixed by white noise, etc. using MATLAB.

Creative teaching uses tools for stimulating creativity. Using visual exercises with simulations and laboratory boards excites students’ minds and captures their interest. Incorporating audio-visual materials during the classes, for example, multimedia interactive tests, movies, pictures, helps the students’ imagination grow and understand the concepts better. 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 promote analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of the class content. Active learning methods also provide students with informal opportunities for feedback on how well they understood the material. This is really important in distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, this academic year. An additional advantage in this course is that students can perform all tasks at home because in the exercises they use software to create mentioned signals, for example, MATLAB or SciLab. So last year during the pandemic all students can learn the material, without any worries accompanying the work with real equipment during the laboratory exercises.

Keywords:

Digital Signal Processing, active learning, MATLAB.