Methods, Resources and Results of the course of “Design of Printed Circuits Boards” in the Degree in Industrial Electronic Engineering

Abstract

The Teaching Innovation Project "Design of Printed Circuit Boards (PCB)" was created as a tool to solve the gap that had been detected in the Degree in Industrial Electronic Engineering at the University of Almería, between the skills that students must acquire and the mechanisms available to achieve those skills. An analysis of the design cycle of an electronic circuit leads us to the selection of the stages on which the Innovation Project must focus, and the type and number of resources to be generated. These resources are in an initial design phase and have been partially applied, for the first time, in the 2019- 2020 academic year, in the subject of Electronic Systems Design, in the second semester. Digital resources (manuals and video tutorials) have been developed for a course on PCB Design for the Degree in Industrial Electronic Engineering at the University of Almería. These resources are a manual and a set of videos on National Instruments® Circuit Design Suit that includes the Multisim® program (for editing electrical circuit schematics and their simulation) and Ultiboard® program (for creating printed circuit boards). However, the simulation characteristics are outside the objectives of this work. Parallel to the mentioned resources, an application methodology has been designed and the results were measured at the end of the academic year. The results are very positive since the degree of student satisfaction is very high, however, in contrast to this appreciation, some of the resources that have been developed are not valued as positively. It is necessary to improve some of the resources and create self-assessment tools, which are considered essential if we want to promote the autonomous work of the student.