Student-Centered Teaching of Introductory Digital Design

The paper presents results of an educational experiment carried out in the academic years 2015/16 - 2017/18 and concerning teaching an introductory digital design course. In the experiment, a combination of effective research-based student-centered teaching methods were applied in lectures. These included: 1) stimulation of positive student-teacher relationship; 2) introduction of new concepts in inductive, intriguing, and counterintuitive ways; 3) adopting formative, anonymous quizzes; 4) stimulating peer instruction; and 5) use of new technologies to effectively gather student feedback. The new lecturing approach resulted in significant improvement of lecture attendance and student achievements measured by exam grades. The presented approach can benefit other engineering educators in similar courses.