IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 55, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2012 525

Supervised Coursework as a Way of ImprovingMotivation in the Learning of Digital Electronics

Raúl Rengel, María J. Martín, and Beatriz G. Vasallo

Abstract—This paper presents a series of activities and educa-tional strategies related to the teaching of digital electronics in com-puter engineering. The main objective of these methodologies wasto develop a final tutored coursework to be carried out by the stu-dents in small teams. This coursework was conceived as consistingof advanced problems or small projects that should serve as a com-pendium of the knowledge acquired during the course, with com-petition between the groups and students’ assuming a professionalrole being key incentive factors. The result was that students had ahigh degree of motivation and engagement in the activity, as well asimproved knowledge because of the self-learning required in car-rying out the coursework.

Index Terms—Digital electronics education, motivationtechniques, problem-based learning (PBL), tutored coursework.

I. INTRODUCTION

T HE ADAPTATION of university degrees in Europe to thefeatures of the European High Education Area [1] has of-

fered a great opportunity to introduce new methodologies andinnovations in the education process. One objective has beento have students take more responsibility for structuring theirlearning process. Digital electronics is a particularly appropriatesubject for the implementation of pedagogical improvements re-quiring students to play an active role in their education, in areasfocused on their future professional activity. Historically, dig-ital electronics has been a pioneer subject in the introduction ofnew educational strategies, with the literature providing manyexamples of novel techniques applied in this area [2]–[12]. Aparticularly interesting topic is the design of digital circuits forcontrol applications in computer or industrial engineering.This paper presents the results of an educational experiment

in creating tutored coursework in the field of digital electronics.This coursework activity was developed in the academic year2010–2011 in the context of teaching the fundamentals of dig-ital electronics in a new Computer Engineering in InformationSystems degree program at the University of Salamanca, Sala-manca, Spain. The main objectives were to increase the moti-vation of the students, to promote their self-learning, and to im-prove their knowledge of digital circuit design well beyond thatdirectly taught in lectures.

Manuscript received February 21, 2012; accepted March 29, 2012. Date ofpublication April 25, 2012; date of current version October 26, 2012.The authors are with the Department of Applied Physics, University of Sala-

manca, Salamanca 37008, Spain (e-mail: raulr@usal.es).Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online

at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TE.2012.2194293

Traditionally, the final piece of coursework was for studentsto write a monograph on a specific course-related topic, and thento discuss this monograph with the rest of the students. This didnot work well from the educational point of view due to the gen-eral tendency to copy and paste Web-based information withoutproper filtering or critical analysis by the students. Students didnot acquire new and persistent knowledge, but just created tech-nical documents that were of little practical use to them, andthat did little to reinforce their motivation and interest towardthe subject.Taking advantage of the implementation of a new first-year

course in the program, “Computer Architecture I,” a newstrategy for the final coursework was designed to have stu-dents apply the knowledge acquired in lectures in a practical,quasi-professional environment. The approach required stu-dents to assume the role of professional engineers and tolook for new information and increase their knowledge ofthe topic to achieve the task proposed. This activity, de-scribed in detail below, has some similarities to problem-basedlearning (PBL) [13], but cannot be properly classified in thiscategory since most of the necessary knowledge was impartedduring the lectures. In fact, widespread use of PBL in thefirst courses of B.S. degrees is not recommended, being moresuitable for final-year or Master’s level courses, by whichtime students have acquired enough knowledge to undertakefull PBL activities [14]–[16]. In the work presented here, theobjective was to teach students the fundamentals of digitalelectronics, as well as to prepare them for future PBL courses;this was achieved by having students undertake a mini-project,during which they would learn new concepts by means of PBLtechniques.This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the main

features of the methodology are presented. In Section III, theresults are presented and discussed. Finally in Section IV, themost relevant conclusions are drawn.

II. METHODOLOGY

A. Roles and Working Groups

The students worked in the small two- or three-person teamsthat had already been formed for the previous laboratory work.The fact that the students already knew each other and were usedto collaborating was a factor in the success of the work presentedhere.Each team played the role of a company designing digital

circuits for industrial or commercial applications. The facultyplayed the role of customers asking for a quote for an applica-tion for an industrial environment that had to fulfill a number ofrequirements.

0018-9359/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

526 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 55, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2012

Fig. 1. Schematic drawing provided to students to illustrate the quote for acontrol system for the sluice gates of a dam to control the water level.

B. Coursework

The coursework consisted of the design of a digital circuit(combinational or sequential, involving the use of flip-flops,logic gates, LEDs, relays, and so on) and the elaboration of aquote corresponding to the implementation of such a circuit ona printed circuit board. The quote was expected to go beyond amere focus on the economic details of the price of components.Instead, it had to provide: a complete description of the digitalcircuit designed by the students (whose level of difficulty wouldbe similar to earlier exercises), simulation results showing thatthe circuit would meet the specifications, and finally the list ofcomponents needed for the physical implementation of the cir-cuit, their price, and the final estimation of the cost of fabricatingthe circuit. The students had to make a public presentation andprovide a quote dossier with three files: a Powerpoint presenta-tion, a Logisim [17] file of the designed circuit, and an AdobePDF file with a full description of their solution to the problem,the list of components, and the final selling price of the circuit.The quotes corresponded to gate-level digital design prob-

lems in applied environments and were of low/medium diffi-culty since this activity was for first-year students. Typical ex-amples include the following:— a control system for the sluice gates of a dam to control thewater level (Fig. 1);

— control of feed pumps and nozzles in a tank in a factory;— regulation of a crossroads by means of traffic lights withpriority for pedestrians.

All the cases considered had some common features: real-istic situations that required the gate-level design of digital cir-cuits for their regulation; a low/medium level of difficulty foran introductory course to digital electronics; similarity to exer-cises practiced previously (examples of the state diagram andcircuit schematic for the sluice gates problem are presented inFigs. 2 and 3, respectively); and finally, capability of being im-plemented with few components beyond those already knownto the students.

C. Time Schedule

Six weeks before the presentation of the work, scheduled forthe last week of the semester, the professors gave a “request forquotation” to each group. Each request for quotation would begiven to two groups, who would work separately without anyinteraction to mimic the role of rival companies competing togive the best offer with the best design.

Fig. 2. Example of a possible state diagram for solving the design problempresented in Fig. 1. The full design process had to be detailed by the students,including these diagrams, in the documents presented to the professors.

Fig. 3. Example of a possible circuit design (corresponding to the state diagramin Fig. 2). Each design had to be simulated using Logisim in the presentation toprove that the circuit fulfilled the specifications.

For the first four weeks, the students could choose, if theywished, to meet the professors to pose any questions related tothe task to be solved. These were in fact role-playing sessionssince the faculty acted at this stage as customers, clarifying anydoubts about the requested specifications or about the instruc-tions. No indications of how to solve the problem were given atthis stage.In a second stage, during the approximately 10 or 15 days

before the presentations, several mandatory meetings were setwith the groups. In these meetings, the students had to presenta basic scheme of the proposed circuit and explain it to theteachers so that any possible misinterpretations, serious designerrors, or deficiencies could be detected. In those cases, theteachers helped the students to reorient their work if necessaryand adequately refocus the activity.

D. Competitiveness and Evaluation

To improve students’ motivation toward the task, a compet-itive factor was introduced. Each of two teams would receivethe same request for quotation for a given problem. When bothquotes had been submitted, the faculty would choose the bestone, symbolically “buying” the circuit, which translated into asmall bonus in the final grade (1%). The whole activity countedas 15% of the final grade. The results were presented (usingMicrosoft PowerPoint or Adobe PDF) by all the members of thegroup in a public session, in which the students had to explain

RENGEL et al.: SUPERVISED COURSEWORK IMPROVING MOTIVATION IN LEARNING OF DIGITAL ELECTRONICS 527

the strategy followed to design the circuit, its implementation,a demonstration of its operation using simulation software, andthe details of the components, pricing, and the final offer forthe product. After the presentation, the teachers questioned thepresenting students about the design, the choice the elementsemployed, and so on. During each presentation, all the studentswere present, except for those of the rival group.The evaluation of this task was carried out by means of

rubrics, set up using the online tool RubiStar [18]. Two teachersevaluated the task separately and then entered a joint final gradefor each team. It is important to remark that the final pricing ofthe circuit was not considered as a relevant factor in decidingwhich of the two rival designs was the best. The design qualityand completeness of the circuit were paramount.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

First, the students’ positive reception of the proposed activitymust be remarked upon. Each group was strongly involved inthe task, with a key motivation factor: that of “beating” theirclassmates responding to the same quote request. That implieda high degree of interest in this task, more than in other courseactivities, showing that the right sort of competitiveness, com-binedwith a widemargin of flexibility and autonomy in carryingout the work, act as very positive factors in increasing studentmotivation. This strategy of awarding a bonus, while not penal-izing any group, introduces a competitive element that gave ex-cellent pedagogic results. Other authors have recently reportedthat, as in the work presented here, the use of role playing in acomputer science course was well received by students [19].Another key issue was the fact that while the basic design of

the circuit (the core of the activity) called for a compendiumof most of the knowledge acquired in the lectures, the elabora-tion of the quote required the students to search for new infor-mation about certain circuit elements and concepts (fabricationof circuit boards, consideration of relays, timers, and the like)that had not been explicitly introduced in theoretical classes orin the laboratory. Therefore, the differentiating factor betweenthe work of the various groups would be the effort put by thestudents in learning these new concepts and practical aspects.In general, most of the groups were able to find for themselvesmost of the information they needed, either through the Webpages of electronics suppliers or contacting real-world compa-nies to determine the actual pricing of electronic components.Any problems or doubts that arose were not significant and

were generally solved in the first round of meetings with thegroups. Although some specific mistakes were made in certaintechnical aspects (in particular, related to the cost and elabora-tion of printed circuit boards), in general the results exceededthe initial expectations. In particular, the quality of the circuits,their design, presentation, and practical demonstration were inmost cases clearly better than expected. All the groups com-pleted the activity with very satisfying results, with an excellentperformance in their final grades. The reports were in general ofvery good technical quality, considering that this was an activityfor first-year undergraduate students.For the overall evaluation, the whole activity counted as

15% of the final grade, as mentioned above. The average

grade achieved by the students was 1.27/1.5, which was highlysatisfactory. It is interesting to remark that some of the studentswho performed best in other course activities may have beenhampered by excessive confidence; perhaps presuming thattheir rival group was weaker, they were finally surpassed bythem. On the other hand, the direct competition was a particularmotivation for the students with worse grades in other activities,who on the whole tried to give their best in this task.An anonymous end-of-term poll was carried out to get stu-

dent feedback on their impressions of the course activities. Thespecific question on the poll as to the supervised coursework,“Did you find the approach for the final coursework adequate?,”scored 4.2 points out of 5 on a Likert scale. Since the activitywas a nonranked competition between groups (everyone couldget the maximum grade in the activity, with a symbolic bonusfor the best work), there was a particular determination betweenthe teams to have their product “bought” by the customers/pro-fessors. This fact, together with the good ambiance in the class,generated a healthy rivalry between the students.

IV. CONCLUSION

This paper presents the results of implementing tutored finalcoursework in the teaching of digital electronics, in particularapplied to circuit design for students in a Computer Engineeringdegree program. The activity had as its fundamental core theassumption by students of a professional role, which requiredthem to apply both the knowledge they had acquired during lec-tures and laboratory activities and the applied knowledge theyhad discovered themselves.The other central feature of the activity was the introduction

of competition between groups by means of symbolic bonusesfor the best work. This methodology—playing a professionalrole and rivalry among groups—provided a significant motiva-tion to complete the task and resulted in a noticeable increase ofstudent interest in the course.In summary, the approach taken and the activities developed

reinforced a series of specific and transversal competenciesfundamental to students’ future performance as professionalengineers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors wish to thank the students of the subject “Com-puter Architecture I” in the year 2010/2011 for their willingnessand interest in the development of the proposed activities.

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Raúl Rengel received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electronic physics fromthe University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain, in 1997 and 2003, respectively.He is currently an Associate Professor with the Applied Physics Department,

University of Salamanca. Over the last 10 years, he has taught various coursesin the Computer Engineering, Materials Engineering, Mechanical Engineering,and Physics degree programs. His major fields are digital and analog electronics,electronic physics, computer architecture, and instrumentation.

María J. Martín received the B.Sc. degree in electronic physics and Ph.D. de-gree in physical sciences from the University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain,in 1992 and 1996, respectively.She has been an Associate Professor with the Applied Physics Department,

University of Salamanca, since 2002, teaching courses in electronic physics,analog and digital electronics, instrumentation, and digital and analog com-munications systems in the Computer Engineering, Materials Engineering andPhysics degree programs and in various course levels. She is the Laboratory Co-ordinator for the Physical Basics of Computer and the Analog CommunicationsSystems Laboratories. Her current research interests are in the field of modelingof electronic transport and noise of submicrometer silicon devices.

Beatriz G. Vasallo received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from theUniversity of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain, in 2000 and 2005, respectively.She is currently an Associate Professor of electronics with the Applied

Physics Department, University of Salamanca. She teaches electronics in theComputer Engineering degree program, and her major fields are digital andanalog electronics, electronic physics, and computer architecture.