Abstract
Foundation and Application of Microcontroller (FAoM), a theoretically and practically important specialized course for automation majors, is interdisciplinary and has a wide range of instructional content. Conventional teaching methods center on the needs of teachers but do not prioritize fostering practical skills and innovation capacity. This split focus tends to neglect the achievement of learning outcomes and causes deficiency in practice ability. Therefore, instructional reform oriented toward outcome-based education (OBE) was proposed in this study to promote endogenous motivation to learn and enhance effectiveness and flexibility in practical teaching by subdividing instructional objectives, rearranging instructional contents, conducting modularized teaching, and formulating typical tasks. To evaluate the performance of the instructional reform based on OBE, students were engaged to develop a temperature measurement system with knowledge they learned by using software Keil, Proteus, and Altium. Statistics show that the proposed methodology exceeds the traditional method of teaching in all six evaluation indexes, achieving the student-centered curriculum objective. The implementation of the reform on FAoM is of considerable importance for students. They benefit from immersive teaching, broadening their minds and cultivating their capacity to address practical engineering problems.
Highlights
Foundation and Application of Microcontroller (FAoM), a core course adopted in many engineering specialties, has a firm theoretical basis and practicality
With knowledge of system architecture learned from FAoM, students are expected to be able to obtain a clearer understanding of how microcontroller unit (MCU) can be applied in industrial and civil construction, grasp the process of hardware and software design at the system level, and formulate research and development programs for complex embedded control applications
A comparison was conducted, in which the data came from Biomedical Engineering (BME) undergraduate students following the Curriculum Design for MCU (CDMCU) course in North Sichuan Medical College (NSMC) before and after the instructional reform
Summary
Foundation and Application of Microcontroller (FAoM), a core course adopted in many engineering specialties, has a firm theoretical basis and practicality. With knowledge of system architecture learned from FAoM, students are expected to be able to obtain a clearer understanding of how MCU can be applied in industrial and civil construction, grasp the process of hardware and software design at the system level, and formulate research and development programs for complex embedded control applications. (4) Assessments are in many cases summative, not formative or self-explanatory, and they lack a combination of multiple measures in assessment from the perspective of the learning process Educationalists consider that this style of teaching and learning introduces difficulties in combining theory with practice, potential mismatches between instruction and capacity promotion, and burdens for students to acquire knowledge [5]. The concept of outcome-based education (OBE), with a student-centered and outcome-oriented purpose, is introduced into the teaching process of FAoM, enabling students to obtain learning interests and solve practical issues
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