Paper ID #15663

Project-Based Approach in an Electrical Circuits Theory Course - Bringing

the Laboratory to a Large Classroom
Dr. Chad Eric Davis P.E., University of Oklahoma
Chad E. Davis received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering, M.S. degree in electrical engineering,
and Ph.D. degree in engineering from the University of Oklahoma (OU), Norman, in 1994, 2000, and
2007, respectively. Since 2008, he has been a member of the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)
faculty, University of Oklahoma. Prior to joining the OU-ECE faculty, he worked in industry at Uponor
(Tulsa, OK), McElroy Manufacturing (Tulsa, OK), Lucent (Oklahoma City, OK), Celestica (Oklahoma
City, OK), and Boeing (Midwest City, OK). His work experience ranges from electromechanical system
design to automation of manufacturing and test processes. His research at OU involves GPS ground-based
augmentation systems utilizing feedback control. Dr. Davis holds a professional engineering license in the
state of Oklahoma. He currently serves as the faculty advisor for Robotics Club and Sooner Competitive
Robotics at OU and he serves as the recruitment and outreach coordinator for OU-ECE. He received the
Provost’s Outstanding Academic Advising Award in 2010 and the Brandon H. Griffin Teaching Award
in the COE at OU in both 2013 and 2014. In 2015 he won the John E. Fagan award that recognizes
excellence in experiential teaching and extraordinary support for students outside the classroom.

Dr. Diana Bairaktarova, Virginia Tech

Dr. Diana Bairaktarova is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia
Tech. Through real-world engineering applications, Dr. Bairaktarova’s experiential learning research
spans from engineering to psychology to learning sciences, as she uncovers how individual performance
is influenced by aptitudes, spatial skills, personal interests and direct manipulation of mechanical objects.

c American Society for Engineering Education, 2016

 Project-Based Approach in an Electric Circuits Theory Course
– Bringing the Laboratory to a Large Classroom

Abstract

Electrical Circuits Theory is a course that is required by many engineering disciplines at

most universities and is often taught in a lecture-based approach. At the University of
Oklahoma, an electrical circuits course was redesigned with a project-based focus in order to
achieve additional learning goals that were considered important to the overall education of
engineering students. Due to the large class sizes and lack of laboratory facilities, an
inexpensive kit of parts and equipment was checked out to the students to support their
hands-on circuit activities. The project was created to enhance students’ understanding of the
course topics and to improve their circuit design and team skills. By switching from a
lecture-based to a project-based approach many planned and favorable outcomes were
achieved. This paper describes the project, the study findings and shares future research
steps. We plan to use the lessons learned from the project-based approach to improve the
hands-on section of the course in future semesters. We trust our study will be beneficial to
instructors, who are teaching an electrical circuits course and are interested in bringing the
laboratory to a large classroom.

I. Background

Electrical Circuits is a required course for most undergraduate engineering major students.
This course is often taught in a traditional lecture-based approach, which makes student
engagement difficult. In addition to encouraging passive learning habits1, this approach of
static learning reduces students’ autonomy and communications, lack of efficient
organization and planning, and it provides less motivation for learning and creativity2. It is
observed that in recent years, instructors of circuits course more often utilize active learning
approaches to help students better understand complex circuit and physical-level phenomena.
It is optimistic to see more instructors are no longer relying only on lecturing high level
abstractions, but are prompt to involve students’ minds and hands in projects, team work,
circuits design, and student-centered activities. This active learning approach has proven to be
effective for teaching circuits in several schools and to improve the quality of teaching/learning
for circuit design in different electrical engineering courses. In addition to enhancing their
understanding of design problems and skills, students who have been engaged in active
learning environments claim to become more motivated and satisfied with their education.
The following review of recent studies includes examples of different hands-on and active
learning approaches in courses involving electrical circuits.

In one engineering school, a student-centered active learning approach was implemented

because evidence-based educational research suggested that student-centered active learning
can produce deeper conceptual learning than traditional lecturing. When active learning is
conducted in an extensively group-based learning environment, students were found to
develop various professional functioning knowledge skills; such as problem-solving, written
and oral communication, independent learning, and team work3. A project based approach
was also utilized in a Microelectronics circuit analysis and design course for undergraduate
Electrical Engineering students. Findings from this study showed that the implementation of
project-based learning motivated students and increased their autonomy and efficiency at the
end of the project1. The project-based approach provides a successful mechanism to help
students achieve high-level learning goals and deal with real problem-solving activities. The
authors of this study suggest that in project-based learning, the instructor has a less central
role, and students take more responsibility for their own learning, which results in higher
student involvement and better understanding of circuits1. The project-based approach has
also been utilized to teach an introductory circuit analysis course. In that traditional
introductory course, the emphasis is on analysis techniques at the expense of instilling an
intuitive understanding of the problem and the underlying engineering principles. In that
course, the instructors introduced a hands-on design project to engage the students in the
material and introduce the students to the excitement and breadth of the field of electronics.
The study provided evidence that the project-based approach increased student interest in
electronics and improved preparation for subsequent courses4.

To overcome learning drawbacks from the traditional lecturing techniques, instructors of

an analog electronic circuits’ course implemented problem-based learning. In their study they
used the approach not only to build on students’ acquaintances, but also on their
competences5. The authors of this study describe the course as an innovative course in
electric circuit theory as they introduced systematic changes in lab instruction to make
students understand the relationship between theory and real circuits. They integrated the lab
sessions and the problem-solving sessions to give students new ways to handle the subject
matter. Instead of focusing on what to report, the students in this course focused on what is
to be learned as they made links between all the components in the course model. Over a two
semester period student exam results showed similar outcomes as the traditional approach,
but the communication skills and the learning motivation of the students were increased5.

In another study, a laboratory-centered approach was utilized to introduce engineering

students to electric devices and systems. First-year engineering students were engaged in
open-ended design projects to explore and construct different types of electrical systems.
Laboratory activities were selected to develop student intuition in electrical concepts,
scientific fundamentals, provide a historical background, and demonstrate systems-level
design issues. Using this approach for three years, the authors of the study observed an
increase in student motivation and engagement, supported by a significant increase in
Electrical and Computer Engineering enrollment6. Additionally, active student engagement
methods such as tutorials and interactive lecture demonstrations allowing real-time display of
experimental data also have been used in recitation sections and in a series of labs, focused on
helping students to develop a better functional understanding7.

II. ENGR 2431 Course History

Although the above examples of active learning approaches have proven to be effective for
teaching circuits in several engineering schools, introductory electrical circuits courses are
still often taught in a lecture-based format with no laboratory component. For Electrical or
Computer Engineering (ECE) students this usually is not a major problem as later in the
curriculum they typically take multiple hands-on lab courses that build on the theory learned
in the introductory circuits course. However, for engineering students with other majors,
there is often little to no hands-on laboratory experience with circuits in their other courses
and these students never have the opportunity to design and build circuits.
At the University of Oklahoma the course that introduces electrical circuits to non-ECE
majors is taught in a different structure than most institutions. The three-credit hour, 16 week
course material is broken up into three distinct, one-credit hour courses that are taught in
series, with each one lasting between 5 and 6 weeks. The first in the sequence, and the focus
of this paper, is ENGR 2431 - DC Circuits. The second is ENGR 3431 – Electromechanical
Systems and the third is ENGR 2531 – AC Circuits. Course descriptions and the engineering
majors that take each course is shown in Table I below. In order to cover the additional
content that is not normally covered in a circuits course, some of the highly specialized
circuit’s topics, such as dependent sources and supernode/supermesh solving methods, are
left out of these courses. While this paper focuses only on ENGR 2431, a previous
publication explains ENGR 3431 in greater detail8.

Table I – Course Descriptions for ENGR 2431, ENGR 3431, and ENGR 2531
ENGR 3431: Electromechanical ENGR 2531: AC
ENGR 2431: DC Circuits
Systems Circuits
“Introduction to basic “Introduction to basic principles of “Introduction to
principles of electrical electromechanical systems. Topics intermediate principles
circuits. Topics include DC include electric machines and of electrical circuits.
circuit analysis, DC motors, physical principles of Topics include basic
transients, static electrical sensing and actuation, types of complex algebra, AC
fields, static magnetic fields, sensors and actuators, digital logic Circuit analysis,
capacitors, inductors, and gates, signal conditioning, A/D resonance, AC
filters.” and D/A conversion, and transients, transformers,
interfacing and communication and electronics (diodes,
protocols.” operational amplifiers).”
Disciplines taking the individual course modules are as follows:
Industrial, Civil,
Architectural, Environmental, Chemical, Mechanical Mechanical
Chemical, Mechanical
These three courses are taught sequentially in the following order:
First 3rd of semester Middle 3rd of semester Last 3rd of semester

ENGR 2431 covers the majority of the electrical topics that were included in the morning
session of the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Exam before it changed formats in January,
2014. This was one of the original reasons that four of the majors only included ENGR 2431
into their curriculum and replaced ENGR 3431 and 2531 with other courses. With the FE
Exam changing to a discipline specific format in 2014, which didn’t include most of the ECE
topics for the majors of the students taking ENGR 2431, a shift in focus to include new
learning goals was needed. Originally the only learning goal for ENGR 2431 was Content
Learning. The sole focus of the lecture-based course was to help the students learn the
content included in the FE Exam so their chance of passing would rise. With the FE Exam
motivation, no longer a central focus, the course was redesigned with new learning goals.

III. ENGR 2431 New Project-Based Course Design

The idea to switch to a project-based approach in ENGR 2431 was first conceived at an
Olin College workshop that focused on designing projects for better student engagement. The
idea of designing a project for ENGR 2431 that could benefit the students in other ways than
just the Content Learning goal was ideal since these students were not ECE majors and the
content learned in the course might not apply directly to their engineering careers. Based on
the topics covered in the course and the type of project that was envisioned, the following
four learning goals were specified for the project designed for ENGR 2431:
• Content Learning
• Design/Creativity
• Hands-On Skills
• Teaming/Collaboration
A description of the project and the assessment of the learning goals of the first
implementation of the project are included in the later sections of this paper. Before
continuing to the details of the project, obstacles to its implementation are discussed. The
largest challenge and primary reason that a project was not previously considered for the
course was the incredibly large class size. The class sizes have gradually increased over the
last several years to the point that there were a combined 282 students in the spring and fall
2015 semesters. With so many students it was difficult to envision a hands-on project. The
second major issue was the lack of lab space and equipment. When designing the project, we
created an inexpensive kit to be checked out to the students that would allow them to have
the flexibility to work on the project activities anywhere instead of in a predetermined lab
space. The third challenge was the shortened timeframe of the course with a duration of less
than 6 full weeks. The next section explains how these challenges were overcome to create a
project in ENGR 2431.

IV. Project Infinity Description

Rather than just teaching students how to analyze circuits like in the original ENGR 2431
course, the new course contains a project that was implemented to teach students how to
design, simulate, construct, and perform calculations on circuits. The project was named
Project Infinity based on our rational that non-ECE students typically will forget how to
perform difficult circuit theory calculations over time, but being exposed to design and
construction of circuits on a breadboard and the opportunity to make measurements with a
Multimeter are skills that we hope will stick with them for a long time. We created a kit of
parts and equipment that were checked out to each group of two students. The kit contained a
Multimeter, breadboard, AA battery cages, hand-tools, jumper wires, and components. The
components included are resistors, capacitors, inductors, LEDs, SPST switches,
potentiometers, switching diodes, and various types of sensors. LEDs, diodes, and sensors
are discussed in more detail in the follow on courses (ENGR 2531, 3431) so introducing
them in the first course formed a solid background for the students who would take the later
courses. By including these additional components, we also aimed to make the circuit
activities more interesting.

The project is broken up into three parts that correspond to the different topical areas
covered in the course. Module 1 covers the basics of DC circuits such as combining resistors,
Ohms law, and Kirchhoff’s laws. Module 2 covers advanced DC circuits such as multiple
loop circuits, Thevenin equivalent circuits, and superposition solving techniques. Module 3
introduces the addition of capacitors and inductors to DC circuits. Students learn to perform
both transient and steady state analysis on circuits that include capacitors and inductors.
Table II shows a brief description of each of the activities included in the three parts of the
project. Even though there is no mention of calculations in Table II the students were
required to compare the calculated result to the measurements on most of the activities.

Table II – Project Infinity Activity Description

Module 1 Activity Descriptions
Make voltage measurements with the Multimeter
Make resistance measurements with the Multimeter
Build a circuit on a breadboard and make current measurements with the Multimeter
Build a circuit with a potentiometer.
Design and build a circuit with a potentiometer to achieve a set voltage
Simulate and build a circuit with a SPST switch
Simulate and build a circuit that includes an LED
Build a circuit with a switching diode
Build a circuit with a photo-resistive light sensor and a LED
Build a complicated circuit and then reduce it to a circuit with only one resistor
Design and build a complicated circuit and modify resistors to achieve a set voltage
Module 2 Activity Descriptions
Simulate and build a 2 loop circuit including multiple resistors and a diode
Simulate and build a 3 loop circuit including multiple resistors and a LED
Design a dimmer circuit using multiple resistors, potentiometer, a switch, and a LED
Build a multiple loop circuit with a potentiometer and a thermistor
Design and build a circuit that demonstrates superposition with multiple voltage sources
Design and build a circuit that demonstrates Thevenin Equivalent circuit theory
Module 3 Activity Descriptions
Build a circuit with a switch, capacitor, and resistors to demonstrate steady state analysis.
Build a circuit with a switch, capacitors, and resistors to demonstrate DC transient analysis.
Simulate and build a store/release circuit that charges capacitors and discharges across a LED
Build a RLC circuit to demonstrate steady state analysis
Build a Low Pass Filter RC circuit and show how DC is passed through
Build a High Pass Filter RC circuit and show how DC is blocked
Build a RC circuit that utilizes a photo-resistive sensor to change the voltage to a set range
 There are three Excel templates that each group of 2 students fills out as they work
through the activities. By using an Excel template, measurement errors can be automatically
calculated, which makes grading much more efficient. The three Excel Template reports have
the following grade breakdown: Part 1 Report (10 points), Part 2 Report (10 points), and a
Final Report that includes parts 1, 2, and 3 (70 points – 20 for part 1, 20 for part 2, and 30 for
part 3). The reason it is broken up into 3 parts is to allow the students to receive feedback
from parts 1 and 2 reports and fix any problems and resubmit them in the final report drop
box. With this resubmittal system the project was set up where the students would get a good
grade if they did the required work. An example of the activity description and the
information that is included in the students’ report submissions is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Module 3 – Part 2b and 2c activity description (top) and report template
submission for Part 2c (bottom).

V. Students Perception of the Project- Survey Results

91 students participated in the survey in the Fall 2015 semester (N = 91). In the survey
they responded to statements regarding their perceived value of the project. The first group of
questions were statements that the students responded in a 5 point Likert scale where:
1=Strongly Disagree, 2=Disagree, 3=Neutral, 4=Agree, and 5=Strongly Agree. Responses of
4 or 5 were considered positive responses. The survey data showed that the students felt the
project positively affected many of the learning goals and overall the project was a good
experience. The Hands-On Skills learning goal statement (“The project strengthened my
hands-on skills”) had a 97% positive response. The Design/Creativity learning goal statement
(“The project strengthened my design skills”) had a 73% positive response and the Content
Learning goal statement (“The project contributed to my learning of the material”) had a
74% positive response. The final question on the survey asked the students whether or not we
should do the project again next semester and 93% of the students that gave a definite answer
responded favorably (79 yes and 6 no). Only 6 students gave an undecided answer. Most of
the students who said no or were undecided stated the issue they had with the project was
that it took too much time to complete. The survey statements also showed that the students
felt the project was too time consuming and difficult. 66% had a positive response to the
statement “The project took too much time to complete” and 74% had a positive response to
the statement “The project was difficult”. It is encouraging that the project received highly
successful survey results even while it was considered a rigorous project.

VI. Content Learning Assessment - Final Exam Comparison

Since the traditional course structure of ENGR 2431 didn’t have any activities that
addressed the learning goals of Teaming/Collaboration, Design/Creativity, or Hands-On
Skills, we were expecting improvements in these areas to naturally occur with the new
project-based course design. The only concern we had was whether the fourth goal of
Content Learning would be negatively affected. In order to assess this learning goal, a
comparison of final exam scores between the traditional approach and the project based
approach was performed. We need to mention here that in both years it was the same
instructor teaching the course and the instructor is also one of the authors of this study. The
same final exam was given in the fall 2013 semester (traditional lecture-based approach) and
in fall 2015 semester (project-based approach) and the results were compared. We also have
to clarify here that the final exams were not returned to the students and the solutions were
not posted - in other words we ensured that no students had advance knowledge of the exam
questions or solutions. In addition, the instructor used the same lecturing styles in delivering
the subject material in both years.

Table III – ENGR Student Population and Average Final Exam Scores
FALL 2013 FALL 2015
Major Students % Cass Students %Class
Architectural 2 3.6% 7 7.1%
Chemical 15 27.3% 45 45.9%
Civil 12 21.8% 8 8.2%
Environmental 8 14.5% 6 6.1%
Industrial 12 21.8% 15 15.3%
Mechanical 6 10.9% 17 17.3%
Cohorts Students Final Exam Students Final Exam
All Students 55 76.4% 98 70.3%
Subset with Exam ≥ 60% 46 81.6% 73 78.1%

The ENGR 2431 final exam was made up of 20 multiple choice questions that are similar
to the DC circuits questions that were on FE exams prior to 2014 (when DC circuit topics
were required for all examinees). Our findings showed that the average grade for the final
exam decreased by 6% from the Fall 2013 to the Fall 2015 cohorts. The p-value was
calculated to be 0.031 using a two-tailed, unequal variance type T-Test. Using a significance
level of α = 0.05 this indicates that the decrease in exam score between the Fall 2013 and
2015 cohorts is statistically significant. This average decline was caused primarily by a larger
number of students who scored lower than 60% on the exam in the Fall 2015 semester. The
“Subset” row listed in Table III above shows the number of students in each cohort who
scored 60% or higher on the final exam. A change in the grading structure that resulted in a
4.6% higher overall grade going into the final exam for the Fall 2015 cohort is one plausible
explanation of why 9% more students in the Fall 2015 semester scored less than a 60% on
the exam and why the grades on the exam were lower in general. This 4.6% pre-final grade
increase for the Fall 2015 cohort is also statistically significant with a 0.028 p-value. The Fall
2015 cohort were able to accumulate higher grades due to the way the project-based course
was graded with a resubmission system. In contrast the Fall 2013 course design included
challenging quizzes that significantly lowered the average grades. With higher grades going
into the final exam many students in the Fall 2015 cohort might have been demotivated to
prepare for the final exam as rigorously as the Fall 2013 cohort. It is interesting to note that
when looking at only the final exam scores from the “Subset” that scored 60% or higher on
the final exam the decrease in average exam scores is no longer statistically significant (p >
0.12). This would support our alternative explanation that more students in the Fall 2015
cohort came in completely unprepared for the final exam because they thought they didn’t
need that high of a grade on the final to get the letter grade they desired in the class.

In order to further analyze the individual exam questions to see which topics the students
did better on and worse on the “Subset” of students that made a 60% or higher on the exam
will be used. Since the exam was multiple choice, with guessing allowed, including data for
students with extremely low grades would reduce the confidence in the individual question
data as many of the extremely low grades would have many more answers that were guesses.
From the Subset group of students there were 8 of the 20 questions that had ± 10% change in
correct answers and a p-value < 0.05. Four of these questions showed statistically significant
improvement and four showed reductions, as shown in Table IV below. The four questions
that showed improvement were from topics that were heavily emphasized in Project Infinity
and the four that showed reduction were more of a theoretical nature that were not as clearly
covered in the project.

Table IV – ENGR 2431 Final Exam Questions with Significant Changes in Results
Topics of Questions with > 10% grade change and p-value < 0.05 % Change p-value
Topics for the 4 Questions with Statistically Significant Improvements in FA15
Combining capacitors to find total capacitance 11.6% 0.015
Combining resistors to find equivalent resistance 20.8% 0.004
DC Steady State Analysis for RLC Circuits 14.0% 0.045
DC Transient Analysis for RL or RC Circuits 17.5% 0.017
Topics for the 4 Questions with Statistically Significant Reductions in FA15
Resistor calculation from equation -18.7% 0.003
Maximum power transfer -37.4% 5.7E-06
Superposition solving method -17.7% 0.023
Determining number of nodes in a circuit -14.0% 0.011
 It is encouraging that the four questions that showed improvement were from topics
where students were required to build the circuit, take measurements, and theoretically solve
the circuit to compare the calculated and measured results. This allowed the students to see
the theory work in a real circuit and solidified the understanding of the topic. This is likely to
be very important for the RL and RC transient analysis questions (shown in the fourth row of
Table IV) because the concepts are difficult to grasp with only the theory. We feel that the
theory will make more sense when the students see the capacitor, resistors, and inductors go
through their charging and discharging cycles. The four questions that were negatively
affected pointed to changes that need to be made to the project. The most glaring mistake
was the maximum power transfer term was not used in the project and students likely didn’t
realize that the load resistor needed to be set equal to the Thevenin resistance to achieve
maximum power transfer. This concept was discussed in lecture, but there was no homework
or quiz where the students could practice solving a problem that included this terminology.

VIII. Conclusion

By changing our Introductory Circuits course from a lecture-based to a project-based

approach we were able to introduce additional learning goals. The study findings clearly
showed that students felt the project helped them improve their hands-on and design skills,
while also contributing to their learning of the content. The teaming/collaboration learning
goal was not directly assessed, but observations of the students’ working together provided
us with visual evidence that positive impact in this area was also achieved. In the next study
we plan on evaluating the teaming/collaboration learning goal.
However, the study findings revealed unfavorable results when comparing exam scores
of ENGR 2431 students who took the project-based version of the course in fall 2015 to the
students who took the lecture-based version in fall 2013. While the students taking the
project-based course answered some questions at a much greater success rate, overall the
final exam grades decreased due to oversights in the project and course design. In future
offerings of the course, quizzes will be given throughout the semester to improve content
learning. Additionally, the project questions and activities will be modified to address some
of the topics that the students scored poorly on in the final exam.
This study builds on the results of previous studies and provides additional evidence that
favorable outcomes occur when implementing active learning concepts into a lecture-based
circuits course. The lessons learned from this pilot study will be used to improve the hands-
on segment of the ENGR 2431 course in future semesters. Due to the initial successes of this
study, we also plan to introduce parts of this project into a circuits course for ECE majors in
the near future. We trust our study could be beneficial to instructors who are teaching an
electrical circuits course and are interested in bringing the laboratory to a large classroom.

IX. References
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Design. International Journal of Information and Education Technology, Vol. 6, No. 9.
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engineering education. Proceedings of the first International Conference on Research in Engineering
Education (ICREE), Honolulu, June 22-24, 2007.
3. On, P. W. and O‟Connell, R. M. (2012). Teaching Circuit Theory Courses Using Team-Based Learning.
Proceedings, American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exhibition.
4. Sterian, A., Adamczyk, B., and M.M. Azizur Rahman. (2008). A Project-Based Approach to Teaching
Introductory Circuit Analysis, 38th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, October 22-25, 2008,
Saratoga Springs, NY.
5. Nerguizian, V. & Rafaf, M. (2009). Problems and Projects Based Approach for Analog Electronic
Circuits’ Course, Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, Vol. 7, Issue 2.
6. Shafai, C., & Kordi, B. A Laboratory-Centered Approach to Introducing Engineering Students to Electric
Circuit and Electric Systems Concepts, Proc. 2012 Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA12)
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7. Bernhard, J. & Carstensen, A. (2001) Activity-based Education in Basic Electricity and Circuit Theory,
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8. C. Davis and P. Pulat, “Redesigning the Circuits for Non-majors Course with the Addition of a Robotics
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