Virtual environments for the design of electronic devices as a means of instrumental digital didactics

Abstract

Instrumental digital didactics reflects the application to education of various digital means of obtaining, processing and interpreting experimental data in accordance with the logic of the scientific method and engineering design. An important component of a modern STEM-oriented educational environment are innovative software products for modelling and simulation of electronic circuits. In educational research projects on their basis, the parameters of the components of electrical circuits created in virtual environments are compared with the technical characteristics of similar devices available for sale. This technique allows not only to demonstrate the similarities and differences of idealized and real artifacts, to identify sources and magnitude of possible errors, but also to obtain electrical characteristics sufficient to build equivalent schemes for substituting devices without prior experimental research. The proposed approach is demonstrated on the example of studying the parameters of a device of current interest — a photoelectric converter (determining the point of its maximum power and the fill factor). Learning by means of using equivalent substitution schemes demonstrates one of the variants of the engineering design process to students. In addition, the proposed method, due to the possibility of development from an algorithmic training procedure to an engineering research, allows for an individual approach to the teaching of electrical engineering and electronics. Research of didactic features of the study of electricity and the basics of electronics, in particular with the use of NI “Multisim 11.0”, is one of the activities of the STEM-laboratory of “MANLab” National centre “Junior academy of sciences of Ukraine”. Some of the tested methods are designed as a workbook and placed in free access in the form of instructions on the online resource stemua.science.