Course Construction and Thinking on Knowledge Framework of Modern Electrical Engineering Education for Non-electrical Engineers Facing Emerging Engineering Education

The Second Industrial Revolution represented by electrification has greatly promoted social productivity, established a complete set of science and technology frameworks, and laid foundations for the next technological revolution. The knowledge system of electrical engineering has a wide coverage of many strongly related engineering fields featured by a rich hierarchical structure. The integrity and scientific value of electrical engineering fundamental are both necessary and inspiring for the education of talented personnel in the background of Emerging Engineering Education. The non-electrical engineers have been required to have a basic understanding of the electrical and information engineering knowledge during their undergraduate studies, which are mainly based on an independent course of Introduction to Electrical Engineering. This paper systematically analyzed the weakness of the traditional course structure from the perspective of the cultivation of talented personnel in the new era. A new course framework was proposed from modern electrical engineering and its relationship with non-electrical engineers. The main objectives were to establish clear concepts of electrical systems, and directly facing the three core issues, including the electric power energy and its conversion, integrated circuit-based signal processing, and basic control technology. The course was organized based on the integral knowledge framework of electrical and information systems. It introduces the way to condense the knowledge of electrical and information into a course within limited teaching hours, and helps students to understand the concepts, methods and solutions of electrical engineering accurately, while training them with scientific thinking methods and engineering approaches. This course framework and its implementation plan have been practiced at Tianjin University for years on a full scale and have achieved very positive effects. © 2021 Chin. Soc. for Elec. Eng.