Developing a distributed hands-on course for teaching advanced electrical engineering topics

Driven by a demand for more practical illustration of advanced electrical engineering topics for Master students in electrical engineering, six institutes of higher engineering education jointly developed a hands-on course on different aspects of intelligent electrical systems (lighting, domotics, power electronics, EMC, etc.). It is based on sharing and pooling specialised knowledge and laboratory equipment at the different sites, and is available for all students via mobility of students and lecturers. The course combines laboratory hands-on sessions with an ICT-based learning environment, according to the concept of guided independent learning. Extensive evaluation during two years of implementation with more than 45 exchanges, yields positive feedback from both students and lecturers and indicates that students have more insight into the topics than without hands-on experience.