Control Technology Instrumentation for Students of Applied Electrical Engineering Study Programme*

Abstract

The paper describes the approaches to teaching the compulsory professional subject Control Technology Instrumentation to undergraduate students. The subject is part of the Control Engineering course in the winter semester of the second year of the 1st Cycle Professional Study Programme in Applied Electrical Engineering. Students attend lectures, perform a series of practical, standardised hands-on experiments in the laboratory and must complete a prescribed control-technology-instrumentation-related project as a part of a seminar. Finally, if they have fulfilled all the requirements, students can take the oral examination.Due to the pandemic situation, the topic and delivery of the seminar have been adjusted over the past two years - three different approaches to delivering the seminar work are presented, namely, normal seminar work execution in the laboratory environment, hands-on seminar work execution at home, and IoT-inspired remote seminar execution from home.We believe that involving students in hands-on experiments and project work, as compared to a traditional lecture-based delivery of the subject, leads to a better knowledge of students in what is after all a rather broad field of control engineering instrumentation. Furthermore, the practical experience leads to a deeper understanding of the underlying principles and equips the students for successful problem solving in their future professional life.