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Научни трудове на Съюза на учените в България-Пловдив, серия Б. Естествени и хуманитарни науки, т. XVIII, ISSN 1311-9192 (Print), ISSN 2534-9376 (On-line), 2018. Scientific researches of the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria-Plovdiv, series B. Natural Sciences and the Humanities, Vol. XVIII, ISSN 1311-9192 (Print), ISSN 2534-9376 (On-line), 2018.
APPLICATION OF LMS FOR TEACHING DIGITAL ELECTRONICS IN COMPUTER ENGINEERING Adelina Aleksieva-Petrova, Valentin S. Mollov Technical University of Nofia, BulgAria
Abstract: This paper presents the capabilities of specially tailored Moodle-based learning management system that has been created for the needs of students from the Faculty of Computer Systems and Technologies (FCST) in TU-Sofia, Bulgaria. Special attention is paid on application of this LMS in education of Digital Electronics course for undergraduate students in Computer Engineering.
Keywords: LMS, digital electronics, e-learning, higher education. I. Introduction. Moodle-based system specifications
Nowadays the integration of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in educational process is wide covered issue in lot of researches. The variety of educational software and web-based tools is enormous and the rapid growth of the Web-based education market offers a number of challenges for software developers and educational content providers. This area covers integrated software platforms for delivery of course content and different learning activities. The main goal in this process is that the teacher and the students to have access to the course materials and the course environment.
Nowadays, each course author has a numerous collection of learning resources, which represent some specific area of knowledge. It is a major challenge to organize author's resources in a well-structured and well-defined course content, which achieves the learning outcomes. Learning object is the smallest entity that can be used and reused for learning content. It usually represents digital and web-based modular resource like image, video or audio file, text, etc.
In the last few years, Learning Management Systems (LMS) have rapidly emerged and will increasingly have profound effects on university teaching and learning. In order to support an entire university's teaching and learning curriculums, they combine a range of course or subject management and pedagogical tools. They are scalable systems which also referred to as "learning platforms", "distributed learning systems", "course management systems", "content management systems", etc. [1]. These systems are used primarily for online or blended learning, support designing, building and delivering course materials online, associating students with courses, tracking student performance, storing student submissions and mediating communication between the students as well as their instructor [2].
Each LMS consists of four main parts: user and student management, course and content management, learning and assessment activities and dialogue, and collaborative tools. Different functionalities are implemented for the instructor and the course administrator, as managing courses (including annotation, schedule, and other important course instance data) and assigning students to student groups. Some functionality for the student is also included in these systems such as searching for courses and reading course materials.
There are different learning activities using ICT, which apply strategies for organizing, comparing, synthesizing and analyzing information for students. Assessment data and evaluation procedures can be recorded and analyzed more efficiently, allowing teachers to see where particular students or areas of learning need more support or attention.
In order to include learning activities in student dialogue and collaboration, different communication alternatives it could be defined:
• E-mail - internal or external mail;
• Chat, virtual chat rooms;
• Discussion Board - branching discussions connected with different courses and other topics;
• News - personalized news that teachers can publish and students can read;
• Shared/Personal Space: each user is given a limited personal space as virtual disk. The shared space is provided, where students can share their materials, while working on a group project.
• Videoconferencing/ online meetings;
• Online Teamwork on shared documents that all students within the team can use in realtime.
A good example of integrating the famous social networks with LMS is the study [3] which were explore the potential to be used the Facebook group as an LMS. Using the Facebook group as an LMS was given teachers allows making announcements, sharing resources, taking part in online discussions and participating in weekly activities, which are the basic functions of an LMS. Faculty of Computer systems and Technologies in Technical University of Sofia supports the students learning process using Moodle as platform to build and organize the content of the courses in the Bachelor's and Master's curricula. The reason to use Moodle is that the system has been designed to be compatible, flexible, easy to modify, and modular. The Moodle [4] (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) system is an open-source course management system that is very popular among university lecturers around the world as a means of creating online dynamic web-based courses for their students. The main purpose of the system is to help teachers create online courses with a focus on interaction and collaboration to build the content of the system. The Moodle system has several features typical of each e-learning platform, as well as some additional innovations. Some of the typical functionalities are: discussion forum, messages, online calendar, online news, online test, etc. [5]. It is possible to extend the functionality of Moodle by creating modules for specific new functions, which contribute to the rapid development of the system and rapid error correction [6]. The system's infrastructure supports many types of plug-ins: activities, types of resources, types of questions, graphical topics, and authentication methods (may require username and password), etc. For all the available information within a course we proposed the specific structure which is organized in separate blocks (Fig. 1). The first block is general information and notes related to the subject and general forum. The second block supports contents about lectures and the third block - labs description. Each of the blocks uses different resources and activities to present the learning content itself. The fourth section is syllabus and fifth is exam tests, recommended literature.
Fig. 1. Structure of course organization
II. Digital electronics courses - academic curricula specifications
As it is obvious, the area of digital electronics covers extremely vast range of topics which are not possible to be discussed and presented in one single course. So, the syllabus of each course is usually focused on a set of problems that are mostly relevant to the specifics of the undergraduate or graduate engineering profile. By definition, digital electronics concerns all electronic circuits that are used to process and control digital signals. In contrast to analog electronics, where information is represented by a multilevel varying voltage, digital signals have just two discreet voltages or logic levels. Digital electronics (DE) is the foundation of all modern electronic devices such as cell-phones, handheld devices, computers, digital cameras, etc. The major focus of the digital electronics course for the undergraduate students in Computer Engineering at Technical University of Sofia, Faculty of Computer Systems and Technologies is to expose students to basic bipolar and MOS/BiCMOS circuit technologies as well as to get them familiar with the up-to-date design processes for prototyping complex digital systems by Programmable Logic Devices (PLD). The syllabus of DE starts with some fundamental issues about amplitude and timing parameters of pulse and digital circuits, basic methods for fast engineering analysis of transistor state in various bipolar circuits, static and clocked MOS inverters with linear and dynamic load, BiCMOS circuits, current-steering bipolar stages, etc. Students are trained to make evaluation of speed capabilities, power consumption, and occupied area of designed digital blocks and to make smart engineering solution navigating between several options. As the computer engineering curricula is focused mostly on digital processing systems and microprocessor architectures, the emphasis is made on how to design complex logic functions inside dedicated circuit basis. Apart the combinational and sequential logic design, the syllabus includes circuit design of flip-flops, Schmitt triggers, registers, counters. The course covers also some topics of mixed-signals circuits like square-shape generators based on logic elements and monolithic design, electronic timers and their applications in computer engineering. Students become also familiar with how to use properly engineering standards, and technical documentation.
The second part of digital electronics course concerns all aspects of design flow and overall process of preparation of complex digital systems based on programmable logic devices. Students become closely familiar with architecture of major Xilinx [7] PLD chips, the ISE WebPack environment cost-free resources capabilities and supporting application tools. The design of the prototypes are done using one of the popular hardware description languages - VHDL, so students are recognized with all important elements of the language, incl. different styles, entity and architectures definition, data types allowed, conditional operators, processes, as well as how to make hierarchical projects with VHDL. Lately, students are trained with several projects with arbitrary low complexity, so to prepare themselves the code, to remove potential errors, and to implement the project on the desired target device. We have chips on 47nm and 28nm technology inside Spartan3, Spartan3E, and Spartn6 logic families with capabilities of up to 500K gates.
III. Course resources into LMS database
The CMR, design to support students in their preparation during semester, in particular - for DE course, consists of different elements. The materials, included for this course are shortly presented in Fig.2. Lectures are presented within 15 lecture notes, which are regularly updated and ready for open discussion with relevant keywords and bibliography. The LMS provides flexible tools for continuous improvement of the course content. Laboratory exercises are divided in two groups: the first cycle (five topics) refers to small and medium-sized integrated circuits design techniques and strategies, while the second one (three topics) deals with prototyping complex VLSI digital designs with VHDL as a language tool. The target devices are Xilinx FPGA and CPLD chips and the design environment is ISE WebPack (v. 10 and v. 13). The VHDL language concepts presentation follows the style, used in [8]. The last topic of the second laboratory cycle presents the potential of the StateCAD environment for rapid and errorless design of finite-state-machines. The outcome from the application of this smart tool is optimal code (both on VHDL or Verilog
Lecture notes - Lecture # 1 Lecture notes - Lecture #2
Lecture notes - Lecture #15
Lab. Cycle I-SSI/MSI circuits
Lab. Exercise - no.1
Lab. Exercise - no.2
Lab. Exercise - no.5
Conspectus, Bibliography, Keywords
Templates on VHDL
Xiling University Program selected training materials
Lab. Cycle II - VLSI prototyping with PLDs
Lab. Exercise no.1
Lab. Exercise no.2
Lab. Exercise no.3
Course Projects topics
Examination sample problems and solutions
Fig.2 Digital electronics course main resources
languages) for both the architecture of the design automata and the corresponding test-benches. The design boards applied in the second exercise cycle are BASYS and BASYS2 of Digilent [9] with 100K gates FPGAs, and in case of complex projects - Spartan3E Starter kit of Xilinx with 500K gates capability or Nexys 3 with Spartan6 FPGA target device. Students are able to check their knowledge by training on site examples and examination topics. Apart from this, a set of exercises provided by Xilinx University Program (XUP) are available for advanced students.
IV. Conclusion
This paper presents one complete application of a Moodle-based LMS system for supporting students, learning Computer and Software Engineering in Technical University of Sofia. Here, the system application is restricted only to presentation its major capabilities in support of Digital electronics course for undergraduate students. The content shows the teaching materials in details and illustrates how they are applied to fulfill the course objectives. The set of resources are arranged and distributed to get optimal understanding by the audience.
V. References
[1] Coates, H., James, R., & Baldwin, G. (2005). A critical examination of the effects of learning management systems on university teaching and learning. Tertiary Education & Management, 11(1), pp. 19-36.
[2] Watson, W., & Watson, S. L. (2007). An Argument for Clarity: What are Learning Management Systems, What are They Not, and What Should They Become.
[3] Wang, Q., Woo, H. L., Quek, C. L., Yang, Y., & Liu, M. (2012). Using the Facebook group as a learning management system: An exploratory study. British Journal of Educational Technology, 43(3), pp.428-438.
[4] Moodle - A Free, Open Source Course Management System for Online Learning. [Online] Available: http://moodle.org.
[5] Cole, J. "Using Moodle". Oreilly Press, 2005.
[6] Moodle Developer documentation:http://docs.moodle.org/dev
[7] Xilinx Inc. all programmable devices official site - https://www.xilinx.com/
[8] Pong P. Chu, FPGA Prototyping by VHDL Examples: Xilinx Spartan-3 Version, Wiley, 2008, p.440.
[9] Digilent Corp. official web site - http://store.digilentinc.com/
