Abstract:

Understanding is a basic trait in the world of college teaching. A trait that becomes prominent in the field of engineering, because the student needs to grasp the concepts and being able to apply them, instead of just repeating mathematical equations. Developing teaching material specifically tailored to achieve the subject objectives is paramount to achieve this effect. This project is centered around the development of Electrónica de Potencia (Power Electronics), one of the subjects imparted in the Industrial Electronics Engineering Degree (2010), by the area of Electronics and Technology in the University of Almería. This subject is interrelated with others in different courses and Industrial specialties.

The main goal of this work is to generate resources and educational material that promote the understanding of the subject by the students. With this goal in mind, a suitable documentation will be provided, fully adapted to the new degrees and the higher education European level, oriented to the understanding of each lesson's core concepts.

It is intended to boost autonomous learning and promote practical knowledge applications by including practical cases and simulations related with the professional environment students will have to face in the future. The main way for achieving that is to develop previously designed practical cases supported by theory, which allow the student to try a wide range of possibilities. This allow them to check the answer of many different significant states to confirm the relationship exposed in each theoretical explanation.

With this kind of procedures, autonomous work is encouraged, allowing her to develop different competences that must be acquired to be proficient in the profession, like autonomous design implementation, thus fulfilling satisfactorily part of what is supposed to be a good Engineer. All this should establish an improvement in the teaching activities along the current methodology.

To establish this process, in the first place the available material is studied and completed with notes and simulations of the circuits. This material will be presented in sliders, with the appropriate explanatory notes. On top of that, an interactive document will be developed, made up from all the different simulations of the circuits exposed in the theoretical material. The electronic simulation process is achieved through the program Pspice, which has capabilities for circuit design and data measurement, providing a first impression of how the circuit should behave.

Students may use the available material without any restriction. Besides, they may reproduce the available exercises, so they develop more efficiently their ability to design electronic circuits. The entirety of the developed material will be published in the virtual learning environment of the subject. An ebook including all the material, simulations and more detailed explanations will be presented as well to improve the availability and searching speed.

Keywords:

Engineering, interactive material, simulation.