The Educational Portal for Theoretical Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering: Experience with Use, Conclusions and Recommendations

Abstract

Matters concerned with practical use of electronic educational resources in studying the discipline Theoretical Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering (TFEE) are addressed. In the authors’ opinion, a lecturer's educational portal opens the opportunity to supplement traditional education with modern technologies through combining conventional and innovative forms as applied to teaching a basic discipline. The article describes the educational portal for TFEE, its capabilities and content. The portal developed and supported by the authors includes theoretical materials (lectures) and practical classes (seminars), material for making individual tests and calculation tasks, material for laboratory course, a virtual lab, and a variety of methodological materials (preparation for exams, lecture presentations). The theoretical material meets the state educational standard and educational program on the discipline. The scope of the developed e-learning resource is sufficient for self-studying and practical assimilation of educational material on the discipline subject to getting consulting support and control from the teachers who conduct class-work. The instrumented content management system (CMS) developed by a team of authors from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute National Research University on the basis of the LAMP (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP) cross-platform shareware web technology was used as a basis for setting up the educational portal. The presented tool belongs to the class of content management systems. These systems make it possible to manage the textual, graphic and multimedia content by offering convenient tools to users for publication and storage of information. The educational portal on such a basic discipline as TFEE has been set up as a result of combining long-standing experience in teaching with advanced computer technologies. The educational portal structure rests on the lecturer's personal experience and on the result of his methodical work. The portal has been elaborated in the course of several years of working with electronic texts, rewriting and reworking many of its sections. But such a huge work has been demanded and appreciated by students. The article presents data from questioning students on using the educational portal. A comparison of these results may be interesting to all teachers who use electronic educational resources in their practical work. The experience gained from the lecturer's work convincingly demonstrates the importance of developing the educational portal for a basic discipline and introducing it into the educational process.