"Product Development" - a New Learning in Open Ended Experiment

Abstract

Nowadays many educational institutions are adopting outcome based education system, wherein active participation and learning of students is involved. This paper reports OBE based learning experience as a part of laboratory experiments in the field of analog electronics at 3rd semester. Theory of analog electronic circuits will be well understood only if students conduct series of experiments from simple to complex circuits using various analog components. Also, if students are taught to develop small products at primitive level, it will help them to carry projects till product realization in higher semesters. This motivated us to keep product development exercise as a part of open ended category along with generating a datasheet for the said product, which requires active learning and involvement of the students throughout the development life cycle of a product. This paper presents the experiential learning in developing 5V power supply as a part of open ended experiment. This helped students not only to understand the product design cycle and also helped to improve their circuit debugging skills as well as in designing PCB's along with generating data sheet for a given specifications at 3^rd semester level.