Journal of Engineering Education Transformations

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study conducted on employing Active Learning strategies towards enhancing the attainment of learning outcomes of a course "Linear Control Systems" in the undergraduate (UG) Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) programme. The existing UG programme curriculum is retrofitted into outcome-based curriculum. The Programme Outcomes (POs) for this programme are derived from the Graduate Attributes of Washington Accord (WA). In order to meet the POs, Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs) are written predominantly in the Cognitive (Revised Bloom's taxonomy) and Psychomotor (Dave's taxonomy) domains for lecture-based courses and laboratory courses, respectively and very few are written in Affective (Bloom's taxonomy) domain. In this paper, four CLOs (i) Discuss the various classification of control systems (K2), (ii) Define the time and frequency response of the system (K2), (iii) Derive the overall transfer function of the given Block diagram of a system (K3) and (iv) Derive the overall transfer function of a Signal Flow Graph (SFG) of a system (K3) are considered to measure the effectiveness of active learning methods in attaining the outcome. Active learning methods such as Jigsaw, Think-pair-share and Peer instruction, and traditional lecture-based methods were employed. In addition, ClassComm software with student interactive devices was used to measure the students' learning in the classroom and subsequently the attainment of CLOs. This study compares the effectiveness of active learning methods with the traditional lecture-based instruction method in relation to the attainment of CLOs. The overall analysis results reveal that both instructors and students received the active learning methods very well, and they are very effective in enhancing the attainment of learning outcomes. However, instructors are of the view that the duration of the contact period should be at least two hours.

Keywords— active learning, Bloom's taxonomy, concept map, control systems, learning outcomes