Interactive engagement methods in teaching electrical engineering basic courses

Active learning, project-based teaching, and student collaboration are current trends in engineering education. Incorporating these have also been the goal of the basic studies development project EPOP started at the Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering in 2011. In the project, two obligatory basic courses in circuit analysis and electromagnetic field theory have been taught using interactive engagement during the spring of 2012. This paper presents the implementation of the teaching, including methods and evaluation with several concrete examples. As a result of the novel teaching, motivation and the engagement of students were at a high level during the whole course and learning results were better than those of the students participating the traditional lecture course.