Abstract:

The rapid evolution of knowledge in technical areas, the changes associated with the Bologna Process, and society's digital transformation pose significant challenges to higher education in electrical, electronic, and computer engineering fields.

If 100 years ago, newly graduated engineers had acquired the knowledge that enabled them to exercise their profession until retirement, nowadays that mastery does not last more than 4 or 5 years. Such a situation demands a new approach to engineering teaching.

At Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), students must learn the essential foundations and skills that will enable them to autonomously acquire the knowledge they will need to deal with future professional challenges. Furthermore, the reduction in the number of teaching hours, resulting from the implementation of the Bologna Process, and the consequent greater accountability of the students for their learning, imply a transformation in HEIs' pedagogy. Teachers have to attentively follow each student's learning progress, guiding and helping them to beat the inherent learning process difficulties. Otherwise, they may feel unaccompanied and end up dropping out.

The definition of the pedagogical framework of the curricular unit of Digital Systems of the 1st year, 1st semester, of the new course in Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering of the School of Engineering - Polytechnic of Porto took all these factors into account. The time reduction in face-to-face classes and the need to create autonomous but guided studying habits led to a flipped classroom model adoption, with a theoretical and practical component complemented with face-to-face laboratory work.

The school's Moodle platform and YouTube support the content organization and distribution over the semester's fifteen weeks. Each week's content divides into several sections. The first one presents the theoretical contents and comprises a variable set of between four and six videos lasting five to ten minutes each. The second, complementary reading advice, lists the recommended chapters of the companion books students should read. The three recommended books for course use are free under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Un-ported License. The third describes the weekly assignment students must do. Depending on the exercises, short videos illustrate, step by step, how to solve example problems. Students may check their responses using a freely downloadable digital logic designer and circuit simulator conceived for educational purposes. The assignments shall be submitted by the end of the week and are worth 50% of the final mark (the other 50% come from a final exam), which propels students to follow the course throughout the entire semester. The fourth describes the weekly lab work students perform during lab classes. Apart from a description of the work, tutorials and other material is provided whenever needed. The fifth and last section provides complementary, non-academic material like instructive industrial or commercial short videos or booklets whose aim is to give students a broad vision of the digital field.

The implemented pedagogical approach allows students to evolve according to their learning rhythm and interests, ensuring their success, proved by the excellent academic results and students' feedback, without neglecting the scientific and technical rigor required in an engineering course.

Keywords:

Flipped classroom, hybrid learning, engineering education, autonomous study.