Interactive Power Electronics Seminar (iPES)-a web-based introductory power electronics course employing Java-applets

This paper introduces the Interactive Power Electronics Seminar-iPES-a new software for teaching a basic course on power electronic circuits and systems. iPES is constituted by HTML text with Java-applets for interactive animation, circuit design and simulation and visualization of electromagnetic fields and is comprised of an easy-to-use self-explaining graphical user interface. The software does need just a standard web-browser, i.e. no installations are required. iPES can be accessed via the World Wide Web or from a CD-ROM in a stand-alone PC by students and professionals. Since the Java applets are simple to handle, a student can immediately start working and can fully concentrate on the theory of a problem. Due to the underlying software technology iPES is very flexible and can be used for on-line learning and be easily integrated into an e-learning platform. The aim of this paper is to give an introduction to the iPES-project and to show different areas covered. The e-learning software is available at no cost in English, German, Japanese and Korean. More translations, e.g. into Spanish and French will be available in the future. The web page is continuously updated in four-week intervals.