The e-LEE association has as aims, to fulfil three main objectives:

• developing and free distribution, by the way of an Internet site, of multimedia resources for teaching in electrical engineering;
• developing and distribution, on the same site, of an evaluation of the benefits that the students might have by using such resources, depending on the pedagogic, economic and social context where they act;
• sharing along the members of the association, of the software methods and tools that allow the developing of new teaching resources, or their adaptation to a specific teaching context.

Multimedia resources for teaching in electrical engineering

The electrical engineering, is the branch of the applied physics that treats the application, within the devices belt by the human been, of the electrical and magnetic phenomena. These disciplines cover applications areas that are the subject of important developments in strategic fields, like electronics, communication systems, or energy management. The request of qualified personal is quite important.

The electrical engineering is, consequently, a discipline difficult to be taught and deeply studied. It requests, from the students, a high abstractive level, much higher than in other fields. In mechanics, elementary notions as position, speed, force (gravitational, centrifugal, attraction) are intuitive notions, that correspond to experiences lived by everyone and the teacher can base on them for the basic concepts consideration. On the other hand, no-one saw an electric charge, an electric current or potential, otherwise than by their effects. The same observation is true for the electric and magnetic fields or fluxes.

The new information and communication technologies - ICT, are able, in this context, to become valuable teaching tools. With the availability to visualize the evolutions of the physical values within the electrical devices, they determine the more intuitive perception of the phenomena and facilitate the assimilation of the mathematical models that describe the evolutions. By having the possibility to virtually manipulate these systems, they facilitate the understanding for the students. This objective is fulfilled without the risk of damaging the equipments, mostly expensive and without the risk of accidents.

Thanks to an European grant (within Socrates-Minerva action), the association develops resources within four thematics:

• electric circuits: describes and exemplifies the basic methods for writing and solving the equations of the electric circuits (starting from the laws of voltages and currents, up to the vector methods for AC circuits, passing through the Thevenin-Norton and superposition theorems);
• power electronics: describes and exemplifies the main topologies and command methods that allow the conversion of the electric power, by the mean of the facilities specific to the power electronics;
• electric machines: describes and exemplifies the operation, making and control of the two most important AC machines: synchronous and induction ones (making, operation equations, operation when supplied from the grid, command - U/f, vector control, DTC);
• renewable energies: technical description and examples for the production of the electric power starting from the renewable sources, as the wind generation and photovoltaic one.

The resources are developed, totally or partially, in 4 languages (English, French, Portuguese and Romanian).

Evaluation

The developing of multimedia tools for electrical engineering is one face of the approach. The using of these tools and their integration in the pedagogic system, such as these tools would really contribute to the teaching (except the motivation determined by the "in vogue" aspect), is another face. The efficiency of such integration, essentially depends by the context:

•  Which is the general pedagogic fame? A "classical" pedagogy, defined by master courses and conducted applications, or an "active" pedagogy, characterised by the problems or project oriented learning?

•  Which are the students we teach? Which is the size of the groups we work with? What human resources we have to perform these activities (quantity and quality speaking)? Do we have a homogenous structure of the students, following of a selection, or a various formation public?

The studies we have developed treat the way how the students feel the teaching resources at their use. The firsts results highlight that are quite net differences, depending on how much they are familiar with the new technologies of information and communication. The attitude of the teacher (that rests to the state of showing the existence of the multimedia tools, or he actively integrates them in his pedagogic act), seems to be, from this point of view, determinant for helping the students with lower results, to achieve maximum of benefits from the multimedia resources at their use.

Sharing of the software methods and tools

Development of the on-line didactic tools can be accomplished only "on-measure" (adapted to the pedagogic context of each institution). This development could prove to be, as necessary time, laborious and expensive. Sharing the developed methods and tools, as the sources of the belt Java applets, is, in the opinion of the association, the best way to capitalize the efforts. The association also follow to coordinate the efforts for developing and to select, by the way of the scientific committee, the resources developed by the members, that are find useful to be posted on its site.

This approach, oriented both on the multimedia tools themselves, but on their integration in the pedagogic context, certainly represents, the originality of our concern.