Abstract:

Electrical engineering has a well-established and essential role in modern societies. The intervention areas span from electricity production and distribution, automation and control, robotics, electric vehicles, communications, and smart cities, just to name a few. Society expects that electrical engineers play a central role in fighting climate change, by proposing and implementing new systems that use renewable energies and contribute to sustainable mobility (more efficient and ambient friendly). Despite the high employability and good salaries of professionals in this area, there is a low demand for electrical engineering programs by students in several countries, including Portugal.

In the electrical Engineering programmes offered by higher education institutions, a solid formation in basic topics is essential, to give the base skills and to allow students to understand and study more advanced and complex topics. At Coimbra Institute of Engineering (ISEC), in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Bachelor, most of the courses have an essential laboratory or experimental component, which is considered a key factor in the students learning process.

Success in a course is intimately connected with student background, studying methods (when, how, and time used) and teaching methodology. The main objective of the study presented here was to understand the student's study methods in the electronic courses, and their perception of the importance of how their study methodology influences their success.

In Electronic courses, the work developed during the laboratory classes is essential to truly understand the main electronic concepts, acquire important practical skills with test and measuring instruments, and perform analysis and critical interpretation of the obtained results. In order for the laboratory work to be carried out successfully, previous preparation is essential that includes electronic circuit analysis and performing simulations.

Through an anonymous questionnaire, it was possible to understand the student's study methods, namely how, when, how much, which support materials and how they study, mainly to the laboratory classes preparation. Teachers' knowledge of their students' study methods and the importance they attach to the preparation and laboratory classes is important so that they can adjust the courses and recommend strategies to the students to increase their success. In the open-ended type question "In your opinion what could improve on the course?", the students point out important aspects that will be taken into account by the Professors of the Electronics courses, which shows the importance of the study carried out.

Keywords:

Study Methods, Electronics Courses, Lab Experiments.