Final Review

Introduction

This report reviews the outcomes of the deliverables and the measured impact. The project has been implemented at Sheffield Hallam University and the proposed deliverables target a group of students studying the Power Electronics module.

A new curriculum framework is developed with the guidance of industrial partners, meetings with books authors and a survey. Then, a curriculum is developed to target the new topics and learning patterns recommended by the framework as a sample.

The targeted students group is 24 students including 10 BAME.

The deliverables of the project so far are

  1. Guidance report on the content and assessment for the Power Electronics module
  2. A road map of educators showcasing the knowledge and skills needed for a Power Electronics Engineer
  3. Educational Kit design and prototyping

Activities

  1. A survey was developed and published to probe the gap between the academics who deliver Power Electronics modules and the industry.
  2. Stein Hans Nesbakk from Nexperia visited Sheffield Hallam University during one of the developed workshops to achieve awareness about the required skills and knowledge in the discipline and also to prob the students’ understanding after they have gone through the developed curriculum
  3. Dr Mahmoud Masoud from the University of Sheffield was successful to start three student final year projects to produce a working kit for double pulse testing.
  4. A meeting with Dr Weidong Xiao the author of two popular books was held to bring his attention to some curriculum development that can be embedded in his book second version.
  5. A Way to Freelancing in Power Electronics workshop was delivered by TikStation Ltd to show how they developed and secured a fund for a product “Mini Power Station” based on the basic knowledge of the power electronics module
  6. An awareness workshop was delivered to second year (L5) students who will be able to select the Power Electronics module from the electives list.
  7. An evaluation questionnaire at the end of the module was published to the students to evaluate their satisfaction
  8. A website was developed to disseminate the activities and outcomes of the project to a wider beneficiary.

Survey outputs

  1. 73.7% of the tutors don’t deliver much information about the knowledge and design of the MOSFET/IGBT Gate Drivers, while 88.9% of the industry requires that as essential knowledge for their engineers.
  2. 21% of the tutors provide limited or no information about the wide-bandgap semiconductors. However, 55.55% of the industry considers it as required knowledge.
  3. 65.7% of tutors provide less basic information about magnetics and high frequency wounded components while 50% of the industry requires it and the other 50% recommends it.
  4. 64.4% deliver in majority a knowledge about diodes and thyristors and their rectification circuits while 44.4% of the industry considers this as not mainly so important and a brief is sufficient for it
  5. 42.1% of the tutors deliver a brief about the DC/DC converters without deep design knowledge or practical work but 86% of the industry strongly consider it essential.
  6. 60.5% of tutors deliver no knowledge about EMI and PCB consideration for power electronics circuits and 23.7% deliver a brief. However, 72.2% of the industry consider it a unique knowledge to have.
  7. Another gap between academics and industry regarding modelling of power converters knowledge as 30.3% of tutors cover that and 55.5% consider it as important.
  8. 40.8% of tutors deliver nothing about power converters control while 66.7% of the industry requires it.
  9. Matlab and LTSpice are the main tools used and recommended by the industry for graduates to have hands-on and this has a good agreement with what is used in academia.

Students Performance

The students have shown over 90% engagement in all items of the developed curriculum and coursework. They submitted two pieces of work (a) Double Pulse Kit and results (b) LTSpice simulation of a buck converter. The results are as follows

  1. Average mark of about 60% for all the assessment work
  2. BAME average mark is 62.5% which is considered as a good representative to the engagement and support they have received. The white students achieved 63.4% average mark.

Impact

  1. The delivered awareness workshop led to 28 students out of 30 students, so 93% of students have selected the Power Electronics module to study next year in their final year.
  2. The evaluation questionnaire reveals that 87.5% of students are satisfied with the delivery and outcomes of this module and recommend it to other learners.
  3. More awareness has been achieved externally by disseminating the developed framework and curriculum sample on TeckRxiv: https://doi.org/10.36227/techrxiv.19612155
  4. More collaboration has been established to kickstart a national curriculum and a proposal has been put for Driving the Electric Revolution: Building Talent for the Future 2 – Full stage competition with 15 partners from academics and industry. It passed stage 1 and waiting for stage 2 results.
  5. A very insignificant awarding gap has been achieved of < 1% between underrepresented student groups and while groups.

Conclusion

The project has delivered all the deliverables and successfully demonstrated the impact of the developed curriculum. The new framework achieved initial industry acceptance and by piloting it at SHU, it showed a better learner response to the industry needs.

wissa