IMPROVING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC THEORY EDUCATION BY INCREASING THE LEARNING MOTIVATION

Abstract

Electromagnetic theory course is currently taught in many institutions and in many disciplines. However, this course usually has difficulties in capturing the glance of students especially for undergrads in disciplines which are not focused on concentrated mathematics education. The common reasons are that the course has mostly theoretical concepts, it needs a well mathematics background and it usually does not have any practical application. Since active and experimental education is usually more attractive to the undergrads in engineering, theoretical courses are difficult for them especially for biomedical engineering undergrads. For this reason an electromagnetic theory course with its laboratory and a project work is developed to increase the motivation of the students and it is planning to be taught for sophomores in Başkent University Biomedical Engineering Program. In order to make the course more attractive firstly, a survey has been completed for different electromagnetic course taught worldwide and syllabus has been updated. Secondly, visual and practical teaching materials are searched for the electromagnetic concepts and they are classified. Thirdly, laboratory experiments are organized and test devices and materials are ordered. Finally, a plan for teaching electromagnetic theory is advised.    This paper explains the walkthrough to make the electromagnetic course more attractive to the students. In the paper the methodology for efficient and attractive learning and syllabus design are discussed.