Francisco Mur

The color of the light: A remote laboratory that uses a smart device that connects teachers and students

Technology surrounds us wherever we look, nonetheless it is necessary to facilitate its use in places where a greater public can enjoy, know and learn with it. Techno Museum and Go Lab projects are focused on this goal. As a first prototype to bring technology closer to young students and schools, UNED has developed a Arduino based smart device that facilitates the integration of remote laboratories in learning scenarios. Initially, the Arduino smart device was designed for robotics laboratories, but finally it was decided to expand it to other laboratories. The current prototype is called RGB led: “The color of the light” laboratory. This paper presents its use by teachers and their potential applications as a tool to bring technology to schools and young people who tomorrow will become engineers, scientists and curious citizens.

Modeling the best practices towards the adaptation to the European credit transfer system in technical degrees within the IEEE ES chapter

Several Spanish universities have started their process of adaptation towards a common educational space as a first stage towards the implementation of the credit system as established by the regulation prior to 2010. These universities have developed several highly- illuminating experiences which could be useful to those teachers and institutions who have no previous references and models to develop new experiences of ECTS adaptation. To help these scholars and universities this paper reports on a project that has been recently completed and which has been supported by the Spanish Government and by the participation to the Spanish Chapter of IEEE Education Society. More specifically, the paper provides details about the management of the project, namely, details about the contributions of its three working groups, as well as the different tasks carried out and their monitoring. The paper also describes the results obtained with the project and provides assessment on previous pilot experiences presented by Spanish university teachers at Engineering Education Conferences as well as on the experiences compiled through the projects Web site.

A review of the Accreditation Bodies and Processes in Europe. A vision from the Engineering

Europe has taken the decision of strengthening its cultural links after the successful implementation of the economic union. Many of the states reached the compromise of coordinating their educational policies to create a European higher education space and to promote the mobility of their citizens. Universities play a relevant role in this process. Quality has been considered as an international determinant factor of the competitiveness of Europe. The instrument chosen has been the accreditation of the quality, as in other geographical areas or countries as the USA. This paper analyses the European process to reach the accreditation, the involved agents (like the ENQA European Network for Quality Assurance, and the ECA European Consortium for Accreditation), along with the role of the quality national agencies, as the ANECA (Spanish National Agency for Accreditation) in the Spanish case

Work in Progress: Modeling the best practices of adaptation to European credit transfer system in technical teachings as improvement to the mobility of students

European countries face significant challenges in crossing international, cultural, and social borders building the common space for higher education. The key in this process, to promote the mobility of the students is the implantation of the European credit transfer system (ECTS). The Spanish universities have begun their process of adaptation of unequal way, with the obligation, in any case, to adapt to the system of credits established in its normative prior to 2010. It is at the present moment, with its forced implementation, when universities require knowing the best practices of adaptation. Some universities have begun with some experiences but all of them look for references of how to do it. This task is not trivial. The objectives for the WIP here presented are to establish a description model of experiences of adaptation on credits ECTS that allows the comparison of all of them and to compile and organize experiences. Later, it will be developed a Web site to disseminate the best experiences

Design of electronics circuits practices for an online master degree program using VISIR

This paper reports on a new designed electronics practices with the remote laboratory Virtual Instrument Systems in Reality (VISIR). The proposed practices encompasses many common electronic circuits for electronic circuits related subjects within the undergraduate engineering education as well as for the postgraduate degrees and the vocational training courses. A new range of components and black boxed circuits have been added to VISIR such as inductors and converter circuits. This paper shows the configuration of the VISIRs switching matrix and provides a case study with results. The proposed practices are aimed to be conducted online as en essential task of the subject “Power Supplies for ICT Equipment”; a subject delivered by the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department (DIEEC) of the Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED) within a new European online master degree program in Information and Communication Systems (ICS) in which UNED is a partners along with other four European university partners from different European countries. Remote laboratories forms an integral part of all masters subject in order to foster experimentation and to prepare qualified and skilled graduates. The proposed practices covers most of the subjects content and are totally administrated and delivered online in accordance with the masters objectives.

Engineering education research in Spain: A review through the education awards of CESEI — IEEE

In this paper, a review of the educational research that is being developed in Spain is realized in the areas of Electrical, Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics through the works presented to the prizes CESEI (Spanish Chapter of the Education Society of the IEEE) in his three editions. There are two categories of candidates to the prizes, one for the Doctoral Thesis and the second for the Final Degree (or Master) Projects. An analysis of the working areas, the subjects covered as well as the conferences and journals where the results are published has been done. The main goal of this paper is to have a general vision about the work done in such areas of educational research in Spain that will be very interesting for academic staff and researchers.

Design, development and implementation of remote laboratories in distance electronics, control and computer subjects

Remote laboratories are a good alternative to traditional laboratories in distance learning, due to students can carry out experiment from anywhere and at anytime. This possibility of providing students with online experiment across Internet has done that professors from electrical and computer engineering department of Spanish University for Distance Learning start to design, develop and implement remote laboratories. This paper is a description of design, development and implementation of some of the remote laboratories, developed by electrical and computer engineering department, and the educational fields that they cover, such as control, electronic and computer.

Use of e-learning functionalities: Results of a survey along Spain

This paper shows the results of a survey performed in Spain about the different functionalities of e-learning platforms. This survey was filled in by a group of teachers, experts in Engineering Education along all Spain, through the Spanish Chapter of the IEEE Education Society. The paper shows the opinion on several aspects about the e-learning functionalities, such as knowledge level, usage level, usefulness, etc., as well as the most used platforms. One of the objectives of this work is to create a reflexive debate in the international community about the e-Learning platform use.

Practice and research in engineering education: Activities of the CESEI Technical Committee

This paper shows the activities of the Technical Committee of the CESEI (Spanish Chapter of the IEEE Education Society). The CESEI is focused on the development of the education in engineering, mainly Electric and Computer Engineering, and the Technical Committee is devoted to contribute to its awareness and dissemination. As in other interdisciplinary fields, the engineering education field involves several sources of information and different stakeholders, each one with its own focus and purpose. As a result, sometimes it may be complex for practitioners and researchers to identify the more appropriate entities for their interests. The CESEI Technical Committee tries to solve this difficulty by providing updated information about the main publications (journals), events (conferences), organizations and other elements of interest.

On-line energy analysis in PV buildings connected to the utility grid

This paper presents a new software tool to estimate the energy flows in grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) buildings. The main aim of this simulator is to predict the energy balance and economic behaviour of PV buildings connected to the utility grid so that different alternatives can be tested to optimise designs. Consumption analysis is performed by considering six parameters that determine the buildings response, following a methodology based on data from monitored buildings, an internal reference building and regression analysis. Photovoltaic energy estimates are obtained by calculating solar radiation hourly values and simulating individual PV cells. The resulting energy balance and the economic behaviour of the building are then estimated and the results given in tables, diagrams and several graphic formats. As an example, a university office building located in Madrid (Spain) is presented and the conclusions reached during several simulation runs are discussed. To make the tool widely available to any potential users it has been programmed in a Java applet format and deployed on a World Wide Web server. By simply using an up-to-date WWW browser, the simulator can be concurrently run by multiple users on the Internet.