Abstract:

Currently, students from China, Vietnam, and the Arab countries are studying at the Department of Power Grids and Electrical Engineering in Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU). The amount of international students has increased over the past five years.
Most Chinese students in Tomsk Polytechnic University feature the intrinsic learning motivation and pragmatism. Such students usually command actual life suggestions. Studying at the university for them is a necessity related to their employment after the graduation. They are focused on the reasonable time management, aware of their capabilities and concentrated on gaining the benefits of learning.
The difficulties in teaching Electrical Engineering to international students are due primarily to the language barrier, professional terminology, and cultural characteristics.
When taking notes of a lecture, students do not manage to quickly write down the basic provisions. Educators constantly introduce new Electrical Engineering terms in Russian during the lectures and practical classes, so students go through the effort of properly translating these terms into their native language. As a result, learning efficiency is reduced, and the time of attaining new material increases by 1.5-2 times.
To solve the above mentioned problems in learning Electrical Engineering, the authors have developed an electronic course “Electrical Engineering” in LMS Moodle.
The electronic course is based on an integral learning method due to its communicative origin. This method allows international students to attain a course, and to command practical skills of applying Electrical Engineering terminology, required for mastering special courses in Russian. This course includes theoretical materials, divided into themes according to the curriculum. The course consists of two parts; each of them contains a number of modules covering specific themes.
Students have the opportunity to read the theoretical materials before a lecture, take notes, translate unfamiliar words and terms in the native language, and prepare questions for the lecturer. The following types of assessment to develop practical skills have been designed within the electronic course:

1. Tests of various complexity levels, assignments range “from simple to complex ones.”
2. To develop listening skills in the field of electrical engineering, video lectures, divided into short clips, are used. Watching the clips is followed by an interactive testing.
3. To assess the acquired skills, students are invited to solve one of the specified technical problems by means of analytical solutions or simulation in NI Multisim software package. This assignment involves the joint work of students and educators.
4. Experimental studies are conducted by means of learning simulators or in the LabVIEW environment.

Upon completion of learning was compared students’ performance in the electronic course and according to the conventional learning model. Analysis of the results showed the efficiency of the approach described to teaching Electrical Engineering to international students.