FPGA IMPLEMENTATION OF COUNTERS FOR TRAINING PURPOSES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF RUSE

In June 2017, the British Council released a report describing 10 trends in global higher education that impact the future of internationalization. Two of them are the multi-sector cooperation and the educational technology. In recent years, it has been observed an impetus for more cooperation between industry and higher education as the employers’ experience challenges in hiring higher education graduates with workforce-ready skills. Creative collaborations are developed through initiatives and partnerships. These types of cooperations are also taking shape in the field of international higher education, for example in virtual international internships. There are two main ways that this report focuses on the importance of educational technology:
1) online learning;
2) the impact on teaching, learning and administration.

As technology continues to integrate and change the world the man lives and operates in, higher education must also change and integrate educational technology that facilitates international higher education. Based on the experience of the other world universities where digital electronics is studied, in the University of Ruse a laboratory board based on Spartan-6 devices was created at the Department of Electronics and widely used in the educational process.

The aim of the courses “Pulse and Digital Devices” and “Digital Circuits” is introducing the students of the specialties “Electronics” and “Computer Systems and Technologies” in the University of Ruse to the main issues of digital electronics based on the connection of the functional capabilities of the digital components with their microelectronic base as well as their applications in constructing pulse and digital devices. For the purposes of the courses a laboratory board based on Spartan-6 devices, the most cost-optimized FPGAs, was created at the Department of Electronics at the University of Ruse and used in the educational process. In the course it is envisaged to study different functional units of sequential type: finite-state machines (Mealy and Moore), including counters, frequency dividers, registers, pseudo-random numbers generators, Johnson ring counters, etc. One of the most attractive topics covered in the course is the synthesis and analysis of counters. FPGA implemention of counters using their schematic presentation and testing it on the laboratory board is presented in the paper.

Active learning methods are applied in the educational process for easily assimilation of the material studied by students. An individual assignment is given to each student.

The assignment includes:
1) synthesis and analysis of a given sequential circuit with AND, NOT, OR, XOR, NAND and/or NOR gates and D, T, SR and/or JK flip-flops and simulating its operation using the educational tool for designing and simulating digital logic circuits with simple toolbar interface Logisim;
2) implementation of the device based on its schematic presentation in ISE Project Navigator and testing it on the laboratory board.

The results confirm the benefits of the active learning methods:
1. they give the learner feedback on their incomplete understandings and encourage them fix this, for example by helping each other;
2. they give the teacher feedback on which learners understand, and who needs help;
3. they develop thinking skills such as analysis problem solving, and evaluation;
4 .they help learners to use their learning in realistic and useful way, and see its importance and relevance.