The importance of face-to-face teaching at fundamental telecommunication courses

Professional undergraduate study of Communication and computer technology at Zagreb University of Applied Sciences is performed by using blended learning, combining the advantages of both face-to-face teaching and computer-assisted learning. For fundamental telecommunication courses such as "Digital circuits", "Signals theory and processing" and "Information theory and coding", teaching includes lectures, exercises and laboratory exercises. Lectures and exercises are held by face-to-face teaching, while laboratory exercises are hardware or software oriented and are performed in a standard laboratory environment. All teaching types are supported by a Learning management system for group as well as individual student preparation and learning. In this paper, the results of research about the correlation of students' success on the exam and their attendance of lectures and exercises, are presented. Modeling of data was performed by linear and piecewise linear regression ("hockey stick" shaped). The analysis of the results showed a strong positive correlation between the student success at exam and their attendance of lectures and exercises. Abovementioned confirms the importance of face-to-face teaching alongside of all technology mediated ways of learning in case of fundamental telecommunication courses.