Educational experiences in electric machine fault diagnosis teaching

Abstract

Industrial maintenance is a field of rapidly increasing relevance. More specifically, maintenance of electric machines and installations is particularly important, since eventual failures in these elements may lead to significant losses in terms of time and money. Due to these facts, the investment and concern in developing proper maintenance protocols have been gradually growing up over these recent years. As a consequence, there is a need to provide future engineers with a solid background in the electric machines and installations maintenance area. The subject `Maintenance of Electric Machines and Installations' has been designed with this purpose. It is taught within an official master degree in Maintenance Engineering. The paper describes the educational experiences reached during the initial years of the teaching of the subject, emphasizing aspects such as the student profiles, the subject approaches, the design of the syllabus, the methodology and the structure of the laboratory sessions. Moreover, the paper discusses other educational strategies which are being introduced to increase the interest in the subject, such as integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), promotion of the collaborative work, inclusion of the possibility of remote learning or development of new assessment systems.